


love was just a glance away

by drunkonyou



Category: Marvel
Genre: 1970s, Ableism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood and Violence, Coming Out, Drug Use, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Humor, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Meet-Cute, Multi, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sign Language, aka medical marijuana, canon disabled character(s), just a smidge towards the end, new jersey inaccuracies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24833260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkonyou/pseuds/drunkonyou
Summary: The year is 1971, and Clint is peer-pressured (lovingly) into going onThe Dating Game, where he ends up being more interested in one of the other bachelors than the bachelorette they’re all trying to win a date with. Because of course he does.An eye-opening weekend at the Jersey Shore ensues.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 21
Kudos: 90





	love was just a glance away

**Author's Note:**

> MY FIRST WINTERHAWK 🥳
> 
> this wip was rotting away in my docs for…two years? and it was originally a l*rry fic HIZZUK i’m so glad i refurbished her
> 
> a million hugs and kisses to [nightwideopen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightwideopen/pseuds/nightwideopen/works) for beta’ing this and being my winterhawk ride or die. ily
> 
> title from strangers in the night by frank sinatra because i am nothing if not predictable
> 
> y’all ready for some crack-y self-indulgence? enjoy!

**_THURSDAY_ **

Clint is just flipping over _Led Zeppelin_ _III_ , bopping his head from the last song still ringing in his ears despite the quiet of the store, no doubt wreaking havoc on his poor, brand-new hearing aids, when Natasha bursts into the shop in a flurry of jingling bells and squeaking shoes. The door smacks against the side of the front desk like it always does (there’s a little indent there they refuse to fix), but he never noticed just how loud it is, and her entrance startles him so badly the vinyl record ends up slipping right from his fingers.

Now, Tony—who’s been holed away in the back room doing  _ fuck  _ knows—hasn’t checked on Clint once in the last hour and a half, but the second the record hits to the floor he’s poking his head out and saying, “You're not breaking my merchandise, are you? Hey, Nat.”

“Tony,” she greets, sounding out of breath. She closes the door gently behind her.

Clint holds the record up to the light when his heart dislodges itself from his esophagus, closing one eye and checking for cracks on the surface. He can practically  _ hear  _ Tony roll his eyes across the shop as he disappears back into the storage room. He wipes the record on the front of his shirt and lays it down on the turntable B-side up. He rests the needle on the first groove and when he looks back up, Natasha is standing in the same spot with the day's newspaper held in her hands like it’s the Dead Sea Scrolls. And there’s a mischievous glint in her eye that Clint absolutely does not trust.

“You’re louder every time, Nat, I swear to God,” he tells her, and sits down unceremoniously on the stool behind the counter. It creaks ominously under his weight, and he throws a leg out to steady himself, just in case. It wouldn’t be the first thing to break in this place and it definitely won’t be the last.

Same time every Thursday afternoon, after her shift at the Chatterbox ends, Natasha nabs a paper from the stand on the corner (Mr. Dabney has yet to catch her in the act, which they all find fucking hilarious) and finds something for them to do over the weekend. And here she is now, hair falling out of its pins and waitress uniform looking like she got mugged on the way over. Last week they went to the county fair up in Sussex and ate their body weight in fried food, and the week before that they snuck into an indoor flea market at some rec center in Wayne and tried on vintage jewelry until they got kicked out.

“Gotta make sure those hearing aids are up to par,” she slaps the newspaper down on the glass top of the counter, making the needle on the spinning record hiccup. “Check  _ this  _ out.”

Clint, smiling, looks to where she's pointing and reads the little advertisement aloud. 

_ “Tired of not having a honey? Worry no longer! Apply to be on ABC’s  _ The Dating Game—wait,  _ The  _ Dating Game? Tasha—”

“Keep reading!”

He sighs, all excitement bleeding out of him like rain sliding off a car roof and continues reading the advertisement, with less enthusiasm. 

_ “Apply to be on  _ The Dating Game _ today for a chance to win a date paid for entirely by us with a handsome bachelor or bachelorette! We are coming to your town  _ (yes, yours!) _ this summer for one day only so apply now! Details below.” _

When Clint looks back to Natasha, she's smiling like a cat that just caught the canary. It’s unsettling, really.

“Well?”

“I preferred the county fair,” he tells her flatly.

He gets up and rounds the counter when she lets out a monstrous groan, picking up a pile of misplaced records sitting on the floor Tony’s been nagging him to put away since that morning. Natasha grabs the newspaper and trails behind him like a shadow. A shadow with tits and a bigger ass than him.

“Oh, come on, they’re coming to Monmouth County,” He doesn’t give her the satisfaction of looking at her. “A weekend down at the beach? A chance to be on TV? And they would pay  _ us _ , Clint. That doesn’t sound fun?”

Clint doesn't even want to know why  _ The Dating Game _ would come to the Jersey Shore of all damn places, but as he thinks about it, a weekend at the beach actually doesn't sound half bad. He hasn’t been down the Shore since high school probably. But then he realizes she just said  _ TV _ and finds himself shaking his head. There are plenty other things he’d rather be doing this weekend than embarrassing himself in front of, well, the entire United States. Like garage saling maybe.

“Why are you shaking your head? What is that?”

Clint slides a Duke Ellington album into a crate labelled  _ Jazz _ and scrunches his nose up. 

“I’m guessing I’d be the contestant?”

Dawning realization blooms over her face,“Read the fine print.” She smirks at him. “Bachelorette has already been picked.”

He looks at her a second longer and then goes back up to the counter when his hands are empty. He lifts the needle on the record player and drops it at the beginning of  _ Immigrant Song  _ again, hoping to drown out the inevitable pleading he knows he’s about to hear and  _ probably  _ succumb to. No, actually. Natasha Romanoff doesn’t plead or beg. She bribes, and blackmails. And Clint always gives in. Tony likes to say he’s pussy-whipped, but. Well. It’s not like that.

_ Three, two, one... _

“I'll give you twenty bucks.”

There it is, ladies and gentlemen.

Clint crosses his arms and faces her. 

“You mean the twenty bucks I gave you this morning for groceries?”

“A different twenty bucks.”

_ “Nat.” _

Natasha throws her arms up in the air, the newspaper still in hand and in very real danger of tearing. 

“You’re such a pussy, Clint.  _ I _ would do it for twenty bucks.”

“Whatever it is, Natasha, you'd probably do it for fifteen.”

Tony finally emerges fully from the back with a cardboard box full of dusty 45’s held against his chest. 

“Finally got those old singles Rhodey picked up last month labeled and ready to go. Think you guys can put them away for me? And in their  _ correct spots _ this time?”

“Sure thing, Tones.”

“I guess so.”

He drops the dilapidated box somewhere behind the counter and claps his hands together. 

“Now, what’s Nat doing for fifteen bucks?”

“Going on  _ The Dating Game _ .”

Tony throws his head back in a laugh, almost knocking his shades right off his nose. 

“Television? She'd do that for a copy of  _ Viva _ and a strawberry TaB.”

Natasha makes a face like she wants to object, but instead says, “Stark, shut the fuck up. There’s a perfect opportunity for Clint to go on the show but he’s just camera-shy.” She reaches out and pinches his cheeks and he slaps her hand away.

Clint grabs the sleeve for  _ Zeppelin III _ and uses it to cover his face before it can be assaulted anymore.

“Aw, come on, Barton,” Tony drums the back of his fingers on the sleeve, fingernails clacking against the glossy cardboard. “It’ll be fun! You might meet your soulmate, who knows.”

“See! That’s just what I had in mind.”

Fucking of course it was, as if everyone and their mother hasn’t been shoving girls under his nose since he was fourteen. But he can’t be mad at them for it. They’re just being good friends.Clint leans backwards over the counter like a kid mid-tantrum, record sleeve still in place. He feels his spine pop deliciously. 

“I think I can get a date on my own, thanks.”

Not a lie at all, actually. He can pick up girls just fine, he just doesn’t know if he really wants to, is the thing. Or maybe he does.

He’s really, really confused. That’s the whole truth.

“When was the last date you went on?” Tony asks, reaching for the candy dish full of Hershey’s Kisses on the counter. He’s starting to sound like a shrink, and not a good one. “It was with that blondie that works at McDonald’s, right? Last month?”

It was actually with a nice guy named Andy he met down at the comic shop a couple of weeks ago, but they don't need to know that either. Clint groans and slaps the cardboard album sleeve against his forehead a few good times and stands up straight. 

“Not everyone has to settle down at twenty like you did, Tony.”

“Hey, it was either get hitched or get drafted.” He pops the chocolate into his mouth. “Not all of us can be blessed with fucked up eardrums like you were, Barton.”

Natasha crumples up the newspaper, so loud it makes his hearing aids do something funny, and chucks it at his head. Tony laughs and throws his own little tinfoil ball at him too.

“All you gotta do is call. Humor me. It could be fun!”

The three of them stand there in the front of the record shop silently staring at each other. Anyone who walks by probably thinks they’re having some sort of Wild West standoff.

Clint bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to bleed.

“If I get a big fat no we’re seeing  _ THX 1131 _ again. And you’re paying.”

“Deal.”

And so it's settled.

It turns out it doesn't take much to be a contestant on  _ The Dating Game _ . All Clint had to do was call the number at the bottom of the crumpled advertisement, give a brief description of himself to the lovely lady over the phone, and after he was forced to listen to a disco rendition of “In the Mood” while he was on hold, the lady returned with a  _ “Congratulations, Mister Barton! You've been selected!” _

So. Well. There’s that.

This isn’t the first time Natasha’s won, and he knows it won’t be the last. They’re still going to see that movie when they get back though.

The taping is set for the next morning in a place called  _ Jersey Shore Studios  _ right off the boardwalk. He's allowed to bring one friend (Natasha, of course) and the production company will be supplying them with a room at the Majestic Hotel right smack in the center of Ocean Grove, a little community a few minutes down the way. It’s going to be a most-expenses-paid-for trip, and he can’t really complain about that, can he?

Natasha, way too pleased with the whole thing, decides to leave that night after his shift ends to avoid any weekend shore traffic. She hangs around the shop the rest of the evening, picking at Clint’s food when Pepper stops by to drop off dinner for him and Tony, and at the stroke of seven they bid him farewell, promising to bring him back a souvenir for giving Clint three whole days off. Then they walk home to pack a couple of suitcases and say goodbye to Lucky and Liho. Clint just keeps reminding himself that he’ll only be in front of the camera for a half an hour at most, and the rest of the time will be spent in the sand drowning his embarrassment in slushies and boardwalk hotdogs.

“They're letting us use the room until Sunday morning so I'll be damned if we don't take advantage of that,” Natasha tells him, stuffing her third bottle of sunscreen into her bag. She’s changed out of her uniform now, and asked one of her co-workers to cover for her until Monday and to stop over to take care of the animals. And that was that. They squeeze their luggage into the trunk of their little shared car, lock up the apartment, and head off into the late evening.

Close to an hour on the road they stop at an A&P somewhere in Morristown to pick up a couple of subs from the deli with that twenty bucks Natasha’s been hanging onto, and they inhale their sandwiches perched on the hood of their jilapi in the parking lot and share a birch beer while they watch the sunset.

Maybe if he pretends this is just a road trip with his best friend and there’s no TV game show on the other end it’ll come true somewhere along the way. He  _ really _ doesn’t want to go on TV.

Clint makes Natasha drive next, claiming the tryptophan in his turkey sub made him too sleepy to be behind the wheel, and stretches out in the passenger seat with his bare feet on the dash. He dreams of vacations to the Shore he took when he was a kid. He dreams of sharing churros with his brother and building sand castles with his mom. But when he comes to, he's staring at the flickering sign of a Wawa backed by the last dregs of the sunset. He swears the sun takes longer to set in New Jersey.

Natasha opens her mouth the second she drops herself back in the driver’s seat, but pauses politely until Clint’s got his hearing aids back in and turned on. She has a packet of Pop Rocks in one hand and a Coca-Cola in the other.

“Coca-Cola? I thought you liked 7-Up,” his throat is scratchy from sleep and he snatches the soda from her hand and takes a sip.

“Morning to you too, sunshine,” Natasha tears open the packet of candy and pours half of it in her mouth. “They were all out of 7-Up so now I’m thinking of burning the place down,” she sticks her tongue out at him, bright red under the lights and covered in Pop Rocks. He’s sure they’re fizzing away but his hearing aids can’t pick it up. “Wanna make out?”

Clint snorts and swaps the soda for the candy.

It's not long before they're driving into Monmouth County and the Jersey Shore sign is greeting them like an old friend. By the time they pull up to the Victorian-style hotel they’ll be staying for their long weekend, it's almost ten o’clock and the sky has just slipped from deep purple to an inky navy. They carry their suitcases across the parking lot and up the stairs. The lobby is quiet and cooler than their car with its almost-but-not-quite broken AC. The lights inside are the brightest thing he’s seen since they left A&P and he squints against them.

A woman with a beehive left over from the last decade pops her head up from behind the front desk and smiles at them. “Evening! What can I do for ya?”

Hotel clerks are not human, he came to that conclusion a long time ago. No sane person is this chipper this late at night. 

“We’re, uh, here for  _ The Dating Game _ ?” Clint tells her, grip tightening on the handle of his suitcase. Well. So much for it just being a normal road trip.

“Oh! Can I get your name, handsome?”

“Clint Barton?”

She props open a big black guest book and begins flipping through the pages with quick, practiced fingers. “Barton, Barton…ah! Here we are. You two will be staying in room 2B, on the second floor. Can ya sign right here?”

Vivian, as her name tag reads, spins the book around and they sign beside their names with a feathered ballpoint pen. Then she hands Clint a skeleton key over the counter.

“Have a nice stay!”

They weave their way around the wicker furniture that decorates the lobby and over to the narrowest staircase Clint’s ever seen. They have a hell of a time lugging their suitcases to the second floor. These places can’t afford elevators? Thankfully  _ 2B  _ is the first door they come across, and Clint uses the key to open it up. The room is about the size of their kitchen back home, and the bathroom the size of their broom closet, but there’s air-conditioning and two beds and a balcony overlooking the ocean, so he can’t really complain. Plus, it’s  _ free _ .

“Not too shabby,” Natasha nods approvingly, dropping her suitcase onto the carpet and throwing herself on the bed nearest the door and ultimately claiming it. “And looky here,” she picks up a wrapped buttermint next to her head. “Pillow mints, just for us.”

Clint laughs and toes off his shoes at the end of his bed before crawling onto the squeaky mattress with a little more grace than her. “Fun.”

“Did you know the tradition of hotels leaving shit on your pillow was because of Cary Grant?”

“Where’d you hear that?” He pops his own mint into his mouth and tells himself it’s a suitable replacement for brushing his teeth. He doesn’t feel like digging his toiletries out just yet. 

“Maria. She’s got a whole notepad of fun facts that she annoys the shit out of us with. Anyways, he was trying to woo a mistress by leaving a trail of chocolates up to her pillow. Long story short, the manager of the hotel thought it was  _ so romantic _ that he started leaving candy on all the guests’ pillows.”

“Just another reason to love Cary Grant, I guess.”

“I guess,” Natasha yawns. “I hate driving. I think I’m gonna call it a night. Wake me up for breakfast.”

The taping is at the asscrack of dawn, since showbiz is full of sadists, so after popping out his hearing aids Clint sets the alarm clock sitting on the table between the two beds accordingly and turns over so he’s facing the sliding glass door. He can just see the water glinting under the moon from where he's laying. 

“‘Night, Tash.”

He doesn’t have to hear to know she says it back.

*

**_FRIDAY_ **

Clint wakes up to a bra in his face. When he throws it back at Natasha, barely conscious and arm definitely moving of its own accord, she’s saying something in sign language with clumsy hands. He blinks.

_ Someone is at the door _ , she’s saying, eyes closed and face pressed into her pillow. 

He turns his hearing aids on, shoves them in his ears, and waits for them to start working. Finally he hears the knocking, not exactly loud and clear, but good enough.

“Who’s there?” he calls. Hotels like these don’t have room service, right?

“The show’s in twenty minutes, thought you’d like to know,” comes an unfamiliar voice from the other side of the door.

What.

Clint grabs the alarm clock from the bedside table and sees that the show is, in fact, in just under half an hour.

“Stupid fucking battery-operated thing,” he flings himself out of bed, nearly bashing his head on the glass knob on the bathroom door when the sheets tangle around his ankles. “Nat, get up, we overslept.”

Natasha flops onto her back and kicks her blankets to the floor with a huff. At one point during the night she’d taken her pants off alongside her bra. “I thought so. Fuck.”

Clint stares at her, heart pounding in his chest. “Why didn’t you get me up then!”

Her eyes pop open, surrounded by smudged makeup. She’s frowning at him. That’s answer enough.

With a hefty roll of his eyes Clint knocks his suitcase over so it’s laying flat on the carpet and tears it open. Out comes the outfit he packed for the show, which is nothing short of a leisure suit, as if he couldn’t embarrass himself further. The lady on the phone told him to wear something nice, and this just so happens to be the nicest thing he owns. He doesn’t even know what he bought it for. Clint swallows down the sick feeling he gets just looking at the teal monstrosity. He also packed a red paisley shirt to wear underneath and a pair of black oxfords.

What the fuck was he thinking?

When he’s down to his briefs he glances over his shoulder and finds Natasha’s still in bed in her T-shirt and panties, one leg dangling over the side and arms beneath her head. He laughs, full of nerves. He doesn’t think he could ever be seriously mad at her. Not even for this trip—he loves her too much.

“You know, I’m surprised people don’t think we’re dating, with the way we act around each other.”

She pops her eyes open again after they’ve drifted back closed and levels him with an unimpressed look. He gestures to their varying states of undress. She raises her eyebrows and hauls herself up. Clint smiles.

If he had to marry a girl, if for no other reason than to quiet the Tilt-A-Whirl that is his brain, he doesn’t think he’d mind it being Natasha. He’s thought about it plenty before. He loves her, that’s enough, right? He could probably marry Natasha.

They dress with their backs to each other, and when he faces her she bursts out laughing, hand on her stomach, back arched, the whole nine yards. He loves her sometimes. Sometimes he hates her.

“I look like I’m going to the fucking roller disco, Tash!”

Natasha, in her corduroy jeans and David Bowie T-shirt, laughs until her shoes are on and tied and her makeup is fresh. “Don’t you want to make an impression?”

He looks down at his outfit. “I really, really don’t.”

She laughs some more, as cruel and unforgiving as always. “And on that note, let’s go.”

They make it to the studio by the skin of their unbrushed teeth, both of them silently complaining about their hunger the entire five minute drive over, and the moment they set foot through the double doors they’re whisked down a long white hallway by a woman with a clipboard and a headset.

“Which one’s Clint?” she asks them briskly.

“I—I am, ma’am,” Clint stammers, tripping over his own feet on the patterned carpet. He shares a look with Natasha, who just raises her eyebrows.

The woman opens a door labeled  _ Audience  _ and shoves Natasha through it none too kindly. Oh yeah, showbiz is hell. “There’s a seat waiting for you in the front row. Don’t look into the camera, be respectful, and do as the prompter says when it says it.”

Just before the door slams shut in her face Natasha gives him a double thumbs up that makes his stomach flip.  _ This definitely is real, and I’m about to be on television. Oh, man. _

The next door they come across is labeled  _ Stage _ and the woman tugs him through by his jacket sleeve. It’s dark, but he can see well enough that he doesn’t trip again, and the woman guides him over to a row of three stools set up behind the decorated partition that the bachelors are hidden behind until they’re announced. The other contestants are already occupying the first two stools, and they watch him as he’s pushed by his shoulder to sit down. He goes easily, feeling like a ragdoll. He ignores them in favor of staring at the partition. Behind it he can hear the audience chattering amongst themselves and his palms begin to sweat. He almost didn’t notice the woman clipping a mic to his lapel.

“Are you going to be able to hear the questions alright?” she asks him. He looks up at her, a question on his lips until he remembers his new hearing aids aren’t any less visible than the last ones he had. At least with these he doesn’t have to carry around a damn transistor radio on his belt, making him look like some sort of spy.

“Yeah, I should be fine,” he tries to smile at her, but his jangling nerves turn it more into a grimace. The woman doesn’t notice, and if she does, she doesn’t say anything. Clint doubts she has time to deal with nervous contestants. He signed up for this, after all.

“You’re all set then. Good luck, boys.” She hurries back into the dark recesses of the stage and Clint squints when the door he came through is pulled open, flooding the area with light.

When it’s dark again, a voice speaks to his right, “Glad to see you made it on time.”

Clint’s eyes have adjusted in the dim lighting enough for him to clearly see that the guy sitting on the stool next to him is missing an arm. He knows it’s not polite to stare, God knows he hates when people stare at him for his hearing aids, but he can’t help it.

And then the guy does something he wasn’t expecting. He uses  _ sign language _ . He’s only got one hand, but you don’t need two to do the sign for taking a picture.

_ Take a picture, it’ll last longer _ , is what he’s saying, but he doesn’t seem insulted, and Clint’s cheeks flush. Hopefully he can’t see it though.

He’s about to stutter his way through an apology, but then Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Band begin to play their little intro and the three of them are thrown into such sudden brightness it disorients Clint.

And then the show is starting.

_ “Coming to you today from the good old Jersey Shore, this is  _ The Dating Game _!”  _ comes the unmistakable voice of the show’s announcer, Johnny Jacobs. Oh, fuck, now he’s really shitting bricks.  _ “Now please welcome our host, Jim Lange!” _

Clint can’t see beyond the partition, but he can definitely hear the audience’s applause grow louder. Swallowing through his dry-as-dirt throat Clint looks over at the other two bachelors (God,  _ bachelors _ , what has he gotten himself into). They’re both dressed reasonably and attractive enough it makes Clint’s jaw feel a little slack.

The guy with the missing arm catches his eye and smirks, a look that reminds him of Natasha. Jesus Christ, Natasha is out there.

“You’re staring again,” he tells Clint. His voice is low and gravelly and it goes straight to Clint’s dick.

Not trusting himself to speak, Clint signs  _ sorry _ and stares at the partition instead.

“Thank you! Hello there everyone! Thank you very much, welcome to our show,” the audience quiets down when their beloved host finally takes the stage. “We’re on location! Now, the set might look a little different, but the game is still the same, I promise. All in their places behind this wall are three smooth-talking bachelors who are set to prove they really know where it’s at. Let’s meet them! And  _ heeeere  _ they are! Good luck, fellas!”

_ Oh man, I’m one of the fellas. _

The partition slides around on its track to reveal them to the politely-clapping audience. They’re all staring. The lights on them feel like high beams.

Clint finds Natasha in the crowd almost immediately and she gives him another thumbs up and a casual  _ good luck _ in sign language. He swallows.

“Now, bachelor #1 is studying to become a doctor, and between all that coursework he likes cooking meals for his friends and beating them at cards. A veteran from Hoboken, New Jersey, here is Sam Wilson!”

The spotlight over the first seat flashes. The guy sitting there has cropped black hair and smooth dark skin. He’s wearing working man boots and a casual leather jacket. When he smiles at the audience Clint catches a gap between his two front teeth that’s charming as hell.

“Bachelor #2 is an auto mechanic by day and a writer by night. He likes cooking too, but claims not to be any good at it. Another veteran from Hoboken, please meet James Barnes!”

Oh, shit, they’re  _ friends _ . He doesn’t stand a chance against them. Thank  _ God _ . When the second spotlight pops like a flashbulb, James gives a shy wave with his one arm, rustling his buttoned shirt open, revealing a nipple. Clint looks away, swallowing.

“And bachelor #3 works in his friend's record shop. He loves his dog more than his roommate and practices archery on the side. Hailing from Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, last but definitely not least, Clint Barton!”

Clint gives a pathetic little wave to the audience and fixes his posture when the camera pans over to him. Despite the instruction to be respectful, Natasha is cheering and whooping from the front row like a mother at her kid’s school recital. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her so excited.

“Today’s lovely bachelorette is a young doll that is going to school to become a nurse. Perfect for Sam, if I do say so myself. She loves watching _ I Dream of Jeannie _ and taking her dog Archie for walks on the boardwalk. Hear that, Clint? From Cherry Hill, New Jersey…  _ Daisy Lynde _ !”

Clint can hear her heels clicking against the floor like the keys of a typewriter, and the three of them turn towards the second partition that’s blocking them off from the other half of the stage.

“Hello, darling,” Jim says, “Welcome to  _ The Dating Game _ .”

“Hello everyone!” Her voice is high and sweet and it doesn’t help Clint’s nerves in the slightest.

“Please, take a seat—yes, right there. Now, Miss Daisy. There are three gentlemen on the other side of that wall, one of which will be your date. Solely your choice, of course, but  _ after _ you’ve heard a bit about them. Say hello to Daisy, boys.”

They greet the mysterious bachelorette in a cacophony of hello’s. Clint sees Natasha laughing at him from the audience and he discreetly flips her the bird. They should’ve just gone to the movies.

“The questions Daisy will be asking the three bachelors were written beforehand on little cards in which she now possesses. But remember things such as  _ name, age, occupation,  _ and  _ income  _ are off-limits, alright? Okay! Fire away, Daisy!”

“Okay, Jim,” she clears her throat prettily. “The NDC—that’s the  _ National Dating Committee _ , of course—just arrested you on some pretty  _ romantic  _ charges. What did you do and how do you plead?”

Clint’s only watched  _ The Dating Game _ a few times, and he forgot how  _ stupid  _ these questions are. He can hear Sam and James sniggering to themselves.

“Bachelor #1?”

Sam sobers up. “I plead guilty.”

“Why’s that?” He can practically imagine her tilting her head.

Sam shares a look with James before answering. “Why, I stole your heart.”

James shakes his head, disrupting his hair, and covers his face with his hand.

“Hmm. Bachelor #2?”

“Oh fuck me,” James whispers into his shoulder, quiet enough that his mic doesn’t pick it up. “I plead guilty.”

“Not you too! What did you do?”

James looks to Clint for help, blue-gray eyes sparkling under the overheads like one of the rocks Natasha likes to wear on her fingers sometimes, but he just shrugs. “Uh… I’m just criminally handsome.”

The audience absolutely eats that one up.

“Next question!” Daisy cries. Clint braces himself and tries not to look into the camera that’s creeping over to him.

“Bachelor #3… My mother just told you to leave, what are you hoping I  _ whisper in your ear _ as you’re walking out the door?”

Natasha is on the edge of her seat, the bitch.

He thinks for a second. His heart is pounding against his ribcage like a bass. What kind of bullshit do people spew on these shows? “How about... _ meet me ‘round back _ ?”

The audience, plus Sam, erupt in applause that makes Clint’s hearing aids go a little fuzzy. James is just grinning. Something in his chest lets loose. Huh, maybe he won’t murder Natasha after all.

The rest of the questions are equally silly and the three of them fly through them. Eventually all the tension seems to leave Clint’s body and he finds himself actually enjoying the game. And before they know it, Jim is announcing that Daisy will be choosing her date right after the commercial break. The quirky music fades away, signaling they are no longer rolling, and Clint straightens out the jacket of his suit with hands that don’t shake.

“Who do you think she’ll choose?”

James is watching him expectantly, hand picking absently at a thread in his jeans.

“Don’t have a clue,” he says honestly. He’s so hot, Clint can barely stand to look at him. “You?”

“It’s gonna be Buck,” Sam reaches over and pats him on the back. “We actually have a bet going, him and I.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, man. Whoever wins has to buy the groceries for the next month  _ and  _ do the dishes.”

That sounds like something he should’ve done with Natasha. All he’s getting out of this is a free trip to the movies.

“What if I win?” Clint asks, feeling braver than he probably is. When he looks at these attractive two vets, whose answers actually made _him_ swoon even though they were pulled out of their asses, there’s no way he’s going to win that date. Not a chance. Not that he really wants to, of course. All he wants out of this is bragging rights.

Sam and James share a look that so obviously says  _ shit, I hadn’t thought of that _ , but before they can come up with something, the jazz music flares up again and the three of them straighten in their seats like good students.

“Welcome back to _ The Dating Game _ ,” Jim announces heartily into his microphone. “Now, Daisy. I’m going to ask you to make the big decision. And that is—which of these three gentlemen will be your date? Will it be one, two, or three? Daisy, which do you select?”

There’s a pause in which everyone and their mother holds their breath, accompanied by an honest-to-God drumroll. Before he shut his eyes, Clint was almost sure Natasha was about to slide right out of her seat in anticipation.

“I choose bachelor #3!”

And the audience explodes. Clint’s eyes fly open. Natasha is kissing the bald man sitting next to her right on the mouth, much to the chagrin of his wife, and the band plays an exciting flourish.

_ What? _

Sam and James share a shocked look, and then they’re reaching over to shake his hand. He does so, dazedly. He won? He fucking  _ won _ ?

When the cheering dies down, Jim asks Daisy, “Why do you choose bachelor #3, darling?”

“Because his answers made me blush,” she giggles. “And his voice is sexy!”

And Sam  _ loses it _ . James almost does too, but he’s just grinning at him with teeth that are slightly crooked and eyes that are as bright as the stage lights.

“Before you meet him, let’s meet the other bachelors! And give them some parting gifts, of course. Both hailing from Hoboken, Sam Wilson and James Barnes!”

The two get up and disappear around the partition and Clint is left alone wringing his hands in his lap. While they’re receiving their gifts, Clint thinks to himself,  _ Oh God, what if she’s ugly? What if she’s an absolute bore? _ He knows it’s just a single date and not an arranged marriage, but—

“And now, from Pompton Lakes, Clint Barton! Come on out, Clint.”

Clint wipes his palms on his thighs again and walks out to the main stage. Sam and James are nowhere to be found, just Jim and Daisy stand there waiting for him with near identical smiles. Daisy’s cute, he immediately notices. She’s petite with rosy red cheeks and a head of curly blonde hair and she beams up at him like she just won the lottery.

He swears her smile falters when she sees him though, eyes flitting to the plastic contraptions behind his ears, but that might just be a trick of the light.

Clint, as was instructed of him by Natasha on the ride down, puts an arm around her waist and kisses her cheek. He can practically taste her perfume on his tongue.

“Aw, would you look at that,” the audience  _ aw _ ’s along with him. “What a handsome couple these two make, huh, folks?”

The cooing turns into cheers again and Clint feels like his face is going to melt right off his skull. He hopes he isn’t sweating through his suit.

“Would you two like to know where you’re going?” Jim Lange asks them, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses.

They nod in unison, and Clint’s head bobs on his neck. He feels like he’s in a dream. Are the cameras even still on them? Is he  _ breathing _ ?

“I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear you’re going to see Bruce Springsteen and his band at Asbury Lanes tonight!” The band hits the cymbals a couple times, and Jim hands them each a cardstock ticket, which they take with a chorus of automatic thank-you’s and stuff into their pockets.

Clint hates Bruce Springsteen.

After they thank the host and blow the audience a kiss, he and Daisy are ushered off the stage and through the door he came through to make room for the contestants of  _ The Newlywed Game _ . They’re given their checks, fifty bucks each, and they sign a consent form that Clint thinks should’ve been signed before they started filming.

Natasha is waiting for them in the main lobby, a T-shirt and ceramic mug in hand. “Congrats, bachelor,” she smirks, back to her chill self. She winks at Daisy, who’s almost as short as her. 

“Thanks, Tash,” Clint says, arm still around the girl’s waist and cheeks still warm. He wonders briefly if the stage lights gave him a sunburn.

“And you are?” Daisy beams at Natasha, but he sees her nostrils flaring, the unnatural stretch of her mouth. The clear sign of jealousy disguised with faux manners.

Natasha sees it too, of course she does, and sticks her hand out. Daisy stares at it like she’s never shaken anyone’s hand before. But she shakes it nonetheless. “Clint’s best friend,” Natasha tells her, pitching her voice just a smidge higher. It makes him want to laugh. 

Daisy looks between them. She doesn’t seem convinced.

_ You know, I’m surprised people don’t think we’re dating, with the way we act around each other _ , he’d said just that morning. He must’ve spoken too soon.

They walk out to the parking lot together, and Daisy’s hand on his arm is as tight as a vice. The sun is sitting higher in the sky as midmorning steadily approaches and Clint can't wait to rip this horrendous outfit off and get something in his stomach.

“Are those the other two bachelors?” Daisy asks, shielding her eyes with her hand. “I’m sure glad I didn’t pick one of them, they look like a couple of hooligans. Plus they fought in Vietnam. Eugh.”

Natasha is very good at schooling her features, but the look she gives Daisy just then doesn’t go unnoticed by him.

Well, at least she’s anti-war. That’s good, right?

Clint follows Daisy’s line of sight across to where Sam and James are sitting on the hood of a crimson Camaro, smoking something that looks too skinny to be a cigarette. They’re the picture of  _ cool  _ and Clint finds it very intriguing. Daisy, on the other hand, not so much. With a wrinkle of her nose, she pecks him on the cheek, writes her telephone number on the palm of his hand with a Sharpie marker she had in the pocket of her skirt, and disappears around the side of the building without another word.

“Well she seems delightful,” Natasha deadpans.

Without Daisy anchoring him to the pavement, Clint finds himself drifting towards the two boys across the parking lot. Natasha follows.

“Hey there, Barton. Congrats,” Sam says when they reach them, throwing out a hand. Clint shakes it. James’s single hand is splayed casually over the inside of Sam’s thigh and a twang of something familiar shoots up his spine like a bolt of lightning. Sam holds the joint out for Clint to take but Clint waves him off. Sam shrugs and hands it to James instead. Clint watches James’s stubbled cheeks hollow out around it and he swallows.

“Uh, thanks.”

“I’m Natasha,” says Natasha, taking the T-shirt and coffee mug into one hand and offering the two guys her other. She shakes each of their hands with her familiar confidence. They both look at her with a glint of amusement in their eyes, and she takes the joint when it’s offered. That’s something he’s always been jealous of, her ability to fit in seamlessly wherever she goes.

“Nice to meet you, sweetheart,” Sam grins at her with his gap-toothed smile. “I’m Sam. This is Bucky.”

“Bucky?” Clint asks, the question rolling off his tongue without his consent.

James— _ Bucky _ rolls his left shoulder out, an almost automatic gesture. “They made me use my legal name. No one calls me by it but my mom, though.”

“Dumbest fuckin’ nickname I ever heard,” Sam mutters, taking the last puff of the joint and flicking it away. “Bucky.”

Bucky rolls his eyes good-naturedly and tells them, “It comes from my middle name, I swear.”

Natasha snorts. “Sounds like our friend back home. His name’s James Rhodes but we all call him Rhodey.”

Bucky thumps the back of his hand against Sam’s chest. 

“See?”

“So did you guys figure out what you’re going to do with your bet?” Clint asks.

Bucky shares a look with Sam who shrugs. “How about we take you out?” He scratches absently at his exposed chest and a nipple threatens to escape again. Clint tries not to stare. He’s been caught already one too many times.

“Take me out? Where to?” he asks the spot just over Bucky’s head.

“It’s a surprise.”

“But only if you don’t wear that ugly ass suit,” Sam says.

Clint looks down at himself. “They said to wear something nice, but I guess it’s too nice.”

“ _ Nice _ isn’t exactly the word I’d use,” Sam says and Clint can guarantee he’s as red as a tomato by now.

Bucky slides off the hood of the car carefully and reaches for Clint’s shirt. He pops open the first few buttons with deft fingers and pushes the fabric aside. When his fingers brush Clint’s collarbone he swears his knees turn to jelly.

“There we go. Now we match.”

Bucky smiles with his crooked teeth, just an inch or so shorter than him, and Clint wants to die. He swallows and hopes Natasha’s natural intuition just up and left her.

Bucky climbs back on the car, hand braced on Sam’s knee, as smoothly as if he had two perfectly working arms. He admires the guy as much as he thinks he’s attracted to him.

Well he definitely didn’t expect  _ this  _ when he agreed to do the show.

“Alright,” Sam says, arm thrown casually over Bucky’s shoulders. Something funny swirls around in Clint’s guts. It’s probably just his insides eating each other for how hungry he is. “Now it’s a fuckin’ disco.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re taking him to a disco,” Natasha wrinkles her nose. “That’s the last thing he needs.”

Bucky nods his head side to side like someone would seesaw their hand. 

“Not exactly.”

“When’s your date with the girl?” Sam asks.

Clint fishes the ticket from his pocket. “Tonight at eight.”

“Perfect. You two staying the weekend?”

“Duh,” says Natasha, making them laugh.

“How does tomorrow night sound? We’ll pick you up. Room 2B, right?”

“Room 2B,” she confirms.

And then Bucky very conspicuously looks Natasha up and down, his lips pursed. Clint has no idea what he’s looking for, but he seems to have found it when he says, “Why don’t you come with?”

The only indication of interest from her is the sudden rise of her brows. 

“Well alright then. Cool.”

“Cool,” Bucky echoes, smiling at Clint.

_ Cool. _

Clint and Natasha stop at a pizzeria on their way back to the hotel to grab an early lunch (or a late breakfast) on account of if they both go any longer they’ll start chewing on their belts. It’s a little place wedged between a cobbler’s and a jeweler’s that sells slices for 35¢. They order two each and a glass of freshly-brewed iced tea with two bendy straws and sit down at a booth near the back. They eat their first slices in complete, blissful silence, playing footsie with each other beneath the table while they enjoy their long-awaited food. Clint’s just starting in on his second slice when Natasha speaks up around her designated straw.

“You’re welcome.”

“Huh?”

She lifts her brows a little. 

“For peer-pressuring you into doing the show.”

Cheeks full of pizza, he stares at her, then swallows. 

“You say that like I’m getting more than a fifty dollar check out of it. I thought I was gonna pass out up there.”

“Who knows. Like Stark said—you might’ve just met your soulmate.”

She shrugs, licking tomato sauce off her palm. Natasha Romanoff is a lot of things, but lady-like is not one of them. But here’s the thing: Daisy Lynde is not the first person that comes to mind when she says that. In fact, he hasn’t thought about her since she wrote her phone number on his hand.

But Natasha doesn’t need to know that. 

The rest of the day is spent in the sand like he was hoping, toes buried and eyes closed against the harsh early afternoon sun. Natasha, lathered up in so much sunscreen she looks like the Michelin Man, falls asleep on her towel with a half-drunk can of 7-Up held securely upright against her stomach, thus leaving Clint alone to doze to the sound of “Brown Sugar” coming from a record player a few umbrellas down.

Clint is so content to the point where he feels he might fall asleep too, sweat collecting in the dips of his collarbones, grains of sand stuck beneath his nails, the sun beating hard and hot against his eyelids. He almost entirely forgets why they’re there in the first place when a shade crawls over him, and the stench of marijuana clogs his senses. He cracks open an eye and is met with the towering figure of James “Bucky” Barnes, barefoot and bare-chested, clad in nothing but red bathing trunks and a pair of dog tags he wasn’t wearing during the show. His hair is beach-wavy, hanging just below his ears. He tries and fails not to stare at the stump of his left arm, which stops just shy of his shoulder. His side and chest are riddled with scars that make Clint want to wince in sympathy. But for once in his life he doesn’t make an ass of himself.

“Clint Barton,” he drawls, bringing his joint to his mouth. The warm sea breeze carries the black whorl of smoke escaping from his lips over Clint and it tickles his nose. “Not afraid of getting your ears wet?”

“Bucky Barnes,” he shields his eyes. “You’re blocking my sun. And no, not if I’m careful.”

Smirking, Bucky steps aside, toes dragging in the sand. “Getting golden before your big date?”

“I wanna look like Burt Reynolds.”

Bucky laughs so hard Natasha startles awake. Although she just takes a sip of her soda and falls right back to sleep.

Quieter, Bucky says, “I think you’re going to need more than a tan to look like Burt Reynolds. Maybe a protein shake or two. And some hair dye.” 

“Did you only come over here to insult me?” 

Clint presses a hand to his chest in faux hurt. He has no idea where this sudden burst of confidence came from; there must’ve been something in the red pepper flakes he buried his pizza in. But Bucky continues to smile at him, lips quirked ever so slightly, making his mouth look crooked. 

“I just wanted to say hey,” he tells him, scratching at his thigh. Clint tries not to follow the movement with his eyes. His legs are like fucking tree trunks. Where Clint is tall, Bucky Barnes is  _ thick _ .

“Hey,” he echoes.

A beat of not-so-awkward silence engulfs them then, one where Bucky smokes and watches Clint with an unreadable expression. Natasha flips onto her stomach, launching her can of soda into the sand. Seeing her swimsuit stuck up the crack of her ass but not brave enough to fix it for her like he usually would, Clint pulls her sunhat off her head and drapes it over her backside. He covers her head with his own baseball cap.

“You two close?” Bucky asks, taking another drag from the joint and grimacing. He rolls out his shoulder again.

Clint leans back on his elbows. “As siblings, yeah,” he doesn’t really know why he felt the need to clarify that.  _ Siblings?  _ When he sometimes thinks about marrying her? As Daisy said:  _ Eugh. _ “Do you even like smoking pot?”

Bucky shrugs a single shoulder. “Helps the pain. Never was one for pills.”

“You some sort of hippie?”

Bucky smiles and squints off into the distance. When he looks back down at Clint, he’s blushing.

Oh, fuck, are they  _ flirting _ ?

No way. Bucky isn’t queer. He doesn’t look the type, right? Then again he doesn’t think  _ he _ looks queer either, and yet…

Bucky’s signing something, joint smoldering away at the corner of his mouth, and he looks concerned.

“Huh?”

_ Can you hear me? _ he says with his hand.

Well it was only time before he made an ass of himself. “Yeah, yeah, sorry. What did you say?”

Bucky plucks the joint from his mouth. “I said I ain’t a hippie. My best friend Steve back home is just so hopped up on drugs that it turned me off to them, you know?”

“What’s wrong with him?”

Bucky shrugs. “Little bit o’ everything. He doesn’t like taking pills either but sometimes he can’t function without them.”

“Right. Nothing wrong with that.”

Bucky’s blue-gray eyes twinkle. “Yeah. Exactly.”

Clint thinks about Bucky’s hand on Sam’s thigh.

“Well, hey, maybe I’ll see you later.”

And then Bucky’s padding away, kicking up sand onto Clint’s towel as he goes.

He watches him leave, staring at the tanned expanse of his back and the muscles that ripple there. The scars are there, too, big and angry and making his skin look like a roadmap. They should probably be ugly, but Clint thinks they’re no such thing.

He watches Bucky until he reaches Sam, who’s sitting in one of those awkwardly shallow sand chairs near the boardwalk, legs splayed out and naked save for a pair of jean shorts. Without warning Bucky drops himself into Sam’s lap, nearly capsizing them both. Sam, mouth clearly shaping out the words  _ what the fuck _ , throws out a hand into the sand to steady them. When they’re no longer in danger of toppling over, Bucky sticks what’s left of his joint between Sam’s lips and plucks off the pair of aviators sitting on Sam’s nose and settles them on his own. He points towards where Natasha and Clint lay, saying something to Sam, and Clint drops his head back to his towel, squeezing his eyes shut.

His heart is pounding at being caught staring again. He blindly grabs his ballcap back and places it over his face, hiding the ridiculous blush he can feel staining his cheeks.

The record player sitting a ways away starts playing “Let It Be” and Natasha slaps her hand down with a dull thud on her towel, startling Clint so bad the hat falls away, and lets out a groan that nearly drowns out the song.

“Not the  _ Beatles _ ,” she grabs her 7-Up, steadily oozing into the sand, and angrily takes a sip. 

“What’s wrong with the Beatles?” Clint asks her, sliding his hat onto his head properly and pulling the bill down as far as it’ll go. He sneaks a glance over to where Sam and Bucky sit to find Bucky now in the sand between Sam’s legs. Sam, joint smoldering at the corner of his mouth and his own dog tags a sparkling beacon against the dark expanse of his chest (he’s even more jacked than Bucky, Jesus Christ), and wrangling Bucky’s hair into what looks like a ponytail.

“They suck,” is all Natasha tells him before throwing her empty can onto her towel and getting up. The sunhat falls off her ass and she jogs off towards the ocean, picking her wedgie as she goes.

Clint rolls onto his side, watching her dive into the thrashing waves. Natasha dunks below the surface a few good times before heading back over and shaking the water off like a dog. Clint, unfortunately in the splash zone, grabs a handful of the soft warm sand and chucks it at her. Half of it sticks, earning him a kick in the side and a  _ fuck you _ .

“I could’ve gotten electrocuted!”

Natasha ignores him and plops back down at his side.

Sam and Bucky are gone by the time they pack up their stuff, and Clint feels strangely disappointed despite the fact that not only will he be seeing them again tomorrow night, but that they all are staying in the same hotel. At the thought of possibly bumping into Bucky before tomorrow throws his stomach into a mess of knots.

And then he remembers his date tonight, and feels something suspiciously like dread.

He thinks about dunking his head in the ocean, hearing aids and all.

“The fuck’s wrong with you?” Natasha asks him as they're walking back to the hotel, towels around their necks and flip-flops kicking up grains of sand at their ankles. A thin trail of water follows behind Natasha. “I’m getting weird vibes.”

Usually a quip would be at the ready on the tip of his tongue, but Clint can’t find it in him to make a joke when his brain is doing The Thing again. But he doesn’t know how to put it all into words, so for lack of anything better to say, he asks, “Should we be worried?”

“About what?” Natasha asks. She scratches her damp hair, mussing it beyond repair. When wet it looks almost brown.

“About, like, going out with those two guys tomorrow. Stranger danger, right?”

“Didn't you learn enough on the show?” she jokes, elbowing Clint in the ribs. “You don’t know any more about Daisy.”

Well. She’s definitely right about that. God, he sounds like such a fucking idiot.

Natasha, complaining about having sand  _ in all the wrong places _ , decides to take a quick shower before they grab dinner. Clint tells her he’ll wait in the lobby, not being sticky with sea water like she is, and throws her his towel to take up to the room. He takes a seat on one of the ancient-looking wicker chairs in the sitting area of the lobby that faces the windows. He wonders if Sam and Bucky are up in their room.

Natasha comes back down the rickety staircase not fifteen minutes later, and when she rounds the chair Clint is curled up in, her hair is wetter than when they left the beach but considerably straighter and she’s wearing a shirt and pair of shorts Clint is pretty sure are actually his. She plucks the _Reader’s_ _Digest_ from his hands he was flipping through and throws it down on the little wooden side table stacked high with magazines, much to the little old lady sitting in the corner with an Agatha Christie book’s chagrin. She drops a shirt into his lap.

“Food,” she states, pulling Clint to his feet by the hand.

Heading downtown and away from the boardwalk and the little secluded area where their hotel resides, they stop in at  _ Nagle’s Apothecary Café _ , an ice cream shop and eatery set up in a renovated pharmacy, of all places. The collection of not-so-empty medicine bottles lining the wall behind the counter creep him out so much he refuses to eat inside.

They make their way back towards the boardwalk after finishing their burgers and fries. They pass a record shop on the way, advertising the new Joni Mitchell album in the window, and Clint nearly tugs Natasha’s arm out of its socket trying to get her to keep walking, telling them they can’t go blowing their limited funds on some new music when Tony and Rhodey will gladly lend them anything they’d like.

Eventually they find a penny arcade, filled to the brim with ecstatic little kids and the elderly looking for a trip down memory lane. They spend the next handful of hours taking turns on the rusting old machines until Clint catches the time on his watch and finds it to be nearly seven-thirty.

“Oh, shit!” he exclaims, hands flying to his hair.

Natasha doesn’t even look up from the peep show box she’s glued to, and Clint thumps her on the back a few good times. She finally pulls away, looking annoyed.

“Wait your turn, jackhole,” she tells him and begins to turn back to the wooden box. Aren’t peepshow boxes for  _ guys _ ?

Clint grabs her arm, pulling her away. “I’m gonna be late for my date.”

Natasha’s eyes bug out of her head at that, and she grabs Clint’s arm to check his watch for herself, despite wearing her own. “Oh, shit!”

They hurry from the arcade and fly down the boardwalk, feet clomping loudly against the wood like a pair of Clydesdales. They nearly knock over a busker with a guitar in their haste to get back to the hotel. When they fling the door to their room open the telephone is ringing from the single nightstand and Natasha throws herself onto her bed to answer it.

“Hello?” she greets, chest heaving and cheeks ruddy. Her face breaks out into a shit-eating grin, and she holds the phone out towards Clint. “Your lover is on the line.”

Clint snatches the handset from her and places it to his ear. “Hello?”

_ “Clint!”  _ Daisy exclaims through the speaker, voice shrill.  _ “I just wanted to check in and make sure we’re still on for tonight.” _

“Hi, yeah, we are,” he tells her, wiping his sweaty palm on his shirt.

_ “Awesome! I’ll meet you outside the casino!” _

“The casino?”

_ “Yeah! The colossal building  _ alllll  _ the way down at the end of the boardwalk!” _

“Oh,” Clint says, glancing at the time on the alarm clock. “Okay, yeah.”

Daisy squeals in delight, and Clint has to pull the phone away from his ear so his hearing aids don’t short out. 

_ “I’ll see you then! Wear something sharp!”  _ And she hangs up.

Natasha grabs the phone from him and slams it back down into its cradle. “How’d she get this number?”

Clint unfurls his palm, where Daisy’s telephone number still sits. He shrugs.

“Whatever. We need to get you dressed, come on.”

Natasha then proceeds to tug Clint’s suitcase out from beneath his bed and flip it open. He protests when she begins rummaging through it, throwing a shirt here and a pair of underwear there, but thinks against it. It’s useless. He figures he should just let her do her thing and hope for the best. Anything is better than that suit he wore this morning; he should’ve thrown it straight in the trash instead of packing it back up nicely.

After forever, it looks like a department store threw up all over the floor, but finally Natasha seems satisfied. Clint stands from where he was sat on her bed and looks at the outfit she laid out on his own.

“Well?” she asks, fists on her hips.

Clint nods approvingly at the polo and slacks laid out neatly atop his unkempt bed. “Nice going.”

Natasha smiles like that was just the reaction she was looking for.

Clint snorts and shucks off his swim trunks, now dry and stiff, and dresses for his date.

He reaches the huge almost-building that is the casino at eight o’clock on the nose. It’s noisy and bustling with activity and it takes him nearly ten minutes to find Daisy’s petite figure waving at him maniacally beside one of the tall stone pillars that frame the large expanse of green glass making up most of the front of the casino.

He gives her a chaste kiss on the cheek when he reaches her and offers his arm. She looks at each of his ears in turn, smiling. It looks a little too pinched for his liking.

“Do you have to wear those in?”

His entire body seems to lock up all at once. A cold chill drips down his spine. “I’m deaf,” he tells her slowly, like he’s talking to a child. This is definitely a conversation he’s had before. “I can’t hear without them.”

Smile never wavering, she says, “Okay,” and takes the offered arm.

Well. This should be fun. But Clint reminds himself it’s only for the night; he never has to see this girl again if he doesn’t want to.

He’s never been this far down the boardwalk before, not even with his family back when they used to visit Ocean Grove every couple of summers. The casino doesn’t even really look like a casino, it looks like someone stuck three wildly different shaped buildings onto each other and called it a day. Inside, on the other hand, looks like a shopping mall. There’s concession stands and advertisements and doors leading off to an arcade and a skating rink and even an old theater. His wing tipped shoes clack loudly against the polished terrazzo floor. It’s huge and open and makes him feel like he’s got more money than he really does.

“It’s huge in here,” he comments, mostly to himself.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Daisy asks, gripping his bicep with her manicured fingers. “My Pops used to take me here all the time when I was a little girl. It’s not what it used to be, though. He says over the next decade the casino will be forgotten completely. Things just aren’t what they used to be.”

Clint thinks it’s a shame. He wishes his mom took him here, too. Instead, they stayed holed up in little Ocean Grove, never straying farther down the boardwalk than need be. He wonders why; it seems more exciting down on this end.

When they reach the other end of the building that claims to be a casino, they come out on the other side not to more boardwalk, but to a busy street. There’s even more vendors out here, and while he’s ogling at the activity someone sneaks a handful of salt water taffy into his pocket. There's a carousel a ways away that's flecked with screaming children and Daisy laughs at the sight. Where the boardwalk they just left was dotted with vacationers and families out for an evening stroll, Asbury Park is filled to the brim with laughter and music and color. He feels like they stepped out into another universe, like something in an episode of _The_ _Twilight Zone_. Daisy doesn’t seem too keen to loiter very long, instead grabbing his arm and dragging him along. He wonders what sort of problem she has with this little part of the Jersey Shore; it seems to suit her snooty personality just fine.

And then he catches sight of two middle-aged men holding hands next to a taco truck and he gets it.

Yeah, he’s definitely not calling her after tonight. Turns out Natasha was wrong after all; this was a mistake.

Asbury Lanes is a few blocks away from the bustling casino, and Clint is sure there’s sweat stains on his nice shirt by the time they step inside the air-conditioned building. And it’s not just from the heat. This is probably the biggest bowling alley Clint has ever been to, and he spends more time than he'd like to admit gaping at the sheer size of the room. Daisy tugs him along though, dragging him up to the front desk that’s occupied by a specky kid with braces.

“How are you folks doing tonight?” he asks, and winks conspicuously at Daisy.

“Fine,” she tells him, and pulls out her ticket from her purse. Clint panics momentarily, thinking he'd forgotten his, but then he remembers Natasha snuck his ticket into the back pocket of his slacks and sighs. They hand the little pieces of cardstock to the kid.

“You two are from that show, right?” He asks them, looking like all his dreams are coming true. Is he even old enough to work here? “ _ The Dating Game _ ?”

“Uh, yeah,” Clint tells him awkwardly.

“That’s so dope,” the kid says. “Anything you want tonight is free, by the way.”

Huh. Well that’s not so bad, actually.

Clint actually has a decent time, despite Bruce Springsteen screaming away at the other end of the room to a bopping, obnoxious crowd. They play a few rounds of bowling, get laughed at by the party of college kids at the next lane over when they keep getting gutterballs, and he eats as much greasy food as he can stomach. Daisy doesn’t eat, claiming fried foods are  _ bad for you _ , and that she ate before he picked her up. He doesn’t think that’s polite date etiquette, but whatever.

The band packs up to leave around ten, and that’s when Daisy decides they should go too. It’s quieter on this side of the casino now, and Clint is almost disappointed to find no men holding hands. He’d say it was because he wanted to see Daisy get all riled up again, but he knows that’s not the truth. The full truth, anyway. The sunset is just barely visible out on the horizon, and Clint snacks on the soft, almost melted taffy in his pocket as they make their way back down to Ocean Grove. Daisy screws her face up when he offers her some like he just asked her to pull his finger.

She doesn’t take his arm either when he offers it.

“I had a really nice time tonight,” she tells him politely when they emerge from the near-empty casino. The streetlamps cast an unearthly glow on her heart-shaped face.

“Yeah,” he says, because he knows she’s lying. He’d say he had a fun time, but  _ really nice _ would be pushing it.

They walk in silence for a while, Clint focusing on the waves crashing in the distance and not the sound of Daisy’s kitten heels on the boardwalk, until she suddenly stops short.

“Well, this is my hotel.”

Clint looks up at what could only be described as a gothic castle. He thinks back to his and Natasha’s room with a frown. He supposes the bachelorette gets better accommodations than the bachelors. When he looks back down at Daisy she grabs his face and pulls him in for a kiss. He makes a noise of surprise against her mouth, and stands stock still as she kisses him. Her hands have found their way to his shoulders, and for an embarrassing second he’s afraid she might reach up and tear his hearing aids out, just to see if he was lying. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.

But she just kisses him, leaning up on her toes. He doesn’t kiss her back,

He's just about to pull away, apologize and wish her goodnight, when a familiar figure catches his eye. He squints over Daisy’s blonde head, ignoring the way her hands have now drifted to his chest, at the shadow across the boardwalk. It could be no one but Bucky Barnes, if the lopsided silhouette is anything to go by, leaning against the guardrail smoking one of his marijuana cigarettes. And he’s watching Clint.

He may not be able to see his eyes in the receding twilight, but he knows he’s watching them.

Daisy makes a small sound of displeasure at Clint’s uncooperativeness. He winds his arms around her waist and pulls her closer. Bucky is still watching, the tip of his joint glowing like a beacon from between his fingers. He sighs against Daisy's plush mouth and gives in. He shuts his eyes and finally kisses her back, and a thrill runs up his spine knowing Bucky is onlooking from not twenty feet away like some sort of ghost.

He kisses Daisy until she’s satisfied, until she's peeling herself off of his front and beaming up at him. Her teeth almost glow, they’re so white. Her pink lipstick is smudged and she tucks a curl behind her ear.

“Tell me, Daisy,” he says without warning, to himself or to Daisy, that familiar feel of false confidence making his fingers tingle, “How do you feel about the war?”

Her smile wavers a bit. “In Vietnam?”

_ No, the one that happened thirty years ago _ , he wants to say, but he’s not that confident.

At his silence, she says, almost haughtily, “I think it’s unnecessary. And everyone who fought in it is a criminal.”

Well that explains her aversion to Sam and Bucky’s veteran statuses. “Everyone? You do know most of the guys fighting in it were drafted, right? That they went against their will?”

She’s stunned into silence, her smile now completely gone. Clint’s not sure what’s gotten into him, but he can’t seem to stop.

“The only reason I’m not out there right now is because I’m a big fat  _ 4F _ . But if it wasn’t for my ears, they would’ve gotten me too, so why do you hate the fact I can’t hear so much? If it’s the reason I’m not fighting in a war you’re against?”

Daisy opens and closes her mouth like a fish a few times, then she huffs and storms up the stairs leading into her hotel. When she’s gone, the rush of adrenaline leaves him so fast he’s lightheaded. But he’s pleased with himself. He’s not one for confrontation.

Smiling, he squints into the distance, but Bucky is nowhere to be seen.

*

**_SATURDAY_ **

Clint is awoken by Natasha throwing a shoe at his head.

“Oh, fuck,” she groans into her pillow when he pops his hearing aids in. “Sorry. Was aiming for the door.”

Clint rubs at his forehead where the shoe had struck him and sits up in the bed. “That’s the complete opposite direction,” he complains, still half asleep and already exasperated with her.

Natasha flips over, pulling his blankets higher over her until they’re touching her ears. “Someone was banging on the door again.”

“And you didn't think to answer it?” Clint grumbles, already pushing himself to his feet. He has an inkling as to who it could be, and his stomach does a backflip. Suddenly he’s wide awake. He shuffles over to the door and pulls it open as much as the chain link will allow. Bucky Barnes’s wide blue-gray eyes stare back at him.

“Morning,” comes his voice through the crack in the door. “Wanna grab breakfast?”

“Uh,” he says dumbly, blinking through the gunk in his eyes.  _ Does he know that I know he was watching us last night? _ “Sure. Let me just...put some clothes on.”

Clint closes the door on Bucky’s grinning, scruffy face and turns back to the room. Natasha has her pillow covering her head now.

“Who was it?” She asks, voice muffled.

“No one, go back to sleep.”

“Okay. Hey,” she says, removing the pillow. Her eyes aren’t even open, “How was your date last night? Can’t believe I fell asleep before you got back. Must’ve been… all that time in the sun.”

“It was fine,” he tells her, but she’s already snoring.

When he slips through the door, Bucky is leaning up against the far wall and pushes off with a smile when Clint locks up.

“Ready?”

“Yeah.”

He follows him down the narrow staircase and through the lobby. If Clint hadn’t checked the time before they left he would’ve assumed it was close to noon, judging by how many people are already milling about. It’s cooler this morning, thankfully, and a light breeze ruffles Bucky’s hair. He has it let down again today, and Clint thinks it looks nice; he thinks more guys should grow their hair out.

He doesn’t get caught staring.

Bucky walks him to a little hole in the wall diner in town, one with a sloping tin roof and neon lettering above the front door. It’s quiet inside, not packed like Clint expected it to be, and they’re taken to a booth toward the back not long after stepping inside. Clint has vague memories of coming here when he was a kid, of him and his brother shooting spitballs at the poor bastards smoking at the counter and getting their asses handed to them when Dad noticed. They’re barely settled in before they’re getting their drink orders taken—tea for Bucky and coffee for Clint. When the server disappears with her little notebook Bucky tucks his feet up beneath him, and the vinyl of the seat creaks with the movement.

“So, how was your date?”

It’s the first thing he’s said to him since leaving the hotel and it leaves Clint a little blindsided. 

“Uh, it was fine. Good.”

“Good,” Bucky echoes, voice plain and face stoic as he watches the little electric train go around its track on the wall up near the ceiling. He doesn’t say anything more about last night, and Clint is starting to believe he’d just imagined the whole thing. Maybe Bucky was just a shadow after all. Or a ghost.

“Is she a good kisser?”

Or maybe not.

Clint chances a glance at Bucky to find him pointedly  _ not  _ looking at him; he’s now watching the shitty little television in the corner, though Clint can see the smile in his eyes.

“She was fine.”

“Are you gonna see her again?”

What kind of game is this guy playing?

Clint thinks about his answer for a few seconds, lets the question marinate. It’s then that their drinks arrive, and they order their breakfast. When they’re once again left alone, Clint takes his time mixing sugar and cream into his coffee while Bucky squirts honey into his tea. They both take sips from their respective mugs, and when Clint swallows the cheap coffee he finally decides it’s safe enough to reveal, “No, probably not. She’s not really my type.”

“No?”

He shakes his head. “She was kind of a bitch.”

And then Bucky laughs, loud and brash. It makes Clint flush to the tips of his ears.

“Wow, Clint, tell me what you really think.”

He shrugs, taking another sip of coffee. Diner coffee is always so shitty; he loves it. If this was literally anyone else, Tony, for instance, he might make the excuse that Daisy was frigid (that’s worked for him plenty of times before), but he feels he can be honest with Bucky. Which...

That foreign confidence comes back, and he’s starting to think maybe it has something to do with Bucky, like maybe his coolness is contagious. 

“Did you hear any of our conversation?”

Bucky looks like he might say  _ I have no idea what you’re talking about, _ but he just shakes his head. “I was too far away.”

Clint tears open a packet of Splenda and pours it into his mug just for something to do with his hands. 

“She had some strong opinions. Ones I didn’t agree with.”

“Like?”

Their breakfast comes. Clint reaches for his Taylor Ham, egg and cheese sandwich the second his plate hits the table. Bucky is still watching him expectantly, politely, and that makes Clint flush again. He swallows and sets the sandwich down.

“She thinks everyone who’s fighting in Vietnam is a war criminal, or something,” Bucky flinches and his hand goes automatically, not to what’s left of his arm, but to the dog tags hanging at his neck.

“I mean, she ain’t wrong. But not all of us went willingly,” he says it like it’s something he tells himself often. It probably is. He couldn’t imagine being in the Army.

“That’s what I told her.”

He brightens up a little at that.

“Also she hates my hearing aids.”

Bucky’s hand drops from the necklace and he starts in on his own breakfast. He cuts up his omelette with practiced ease. 

“Yeah. I get that.” His voice has lost some of its usual amusement and Clint hates that he’s the reason why. “You should see the looks I get when I pick my little sisters up from school. One time,” he laughs in a mirthless sort of way, “One of the moms told me I was  _ hurting the schools morale _ by being there. Looks like we’ve got something in common.”

He doesn’t tell him how she reacted to seeing the two guys holding hands, but he thinks they probably have that in common too. Maybe.

He hopes.

“Yeah, looks like.”

Clint’s never met anyone else with something wrong with them—not  _ wrong _ , Natasha’s voice reminds him in the back of his head, just disabled—but it’s comforting. Bucky looks at him with empathy, instead of sympathy. He gets it.

Their waitress comes to check on them twice, and both times she stares at Bucky with wide eyes, at the clunky devices stuck to Clint’s ears, and each time she leaves they look at each other and laugh. If he were out with Natasha, she’d tell the girl to stick it where the sun don’t shine and make the whole thing awkward, but not Bucky. 

Because Bucky gets it.

They don’t speak again until their plates are licked clean and they’re both sipping at their glasses of ice water. The TV is playing an old episode of _The_ _Three Stooges_ , and although Bucky is watching cars and people pass by out the window, he lets out a little huff of laughter every time Curly opens his mouth. Clint leans back in his seat, picking at a leftover piece of buttered rye, and watches as Bucky fingers the chain around his neck absently.

“So,” he begins. He thinks of asking about Vietnam, but that’s probably something he shouldn’t be nosy about. That’s one thing they  _ don’t _ have in common. Instead he asks, “You know how to sign?”

Bucky slides his eyes over to him and shrugs with one shoulder. He’s smiling, and Clint is thankful he didn’t ask about the war. “Best friend back home can’t hear too well outta one ear so I learned when we were kids. It’s been hard figuring out how to do it with—you know.”

One hand. Right.

“You’re good,” Clint tells him. “I can barely sign with two hands sometimes.”

Bucky looks like the sun when he taps his fingers against his chin.  _ Thank you. _

There really isn’t a good way of saying  _ you’re welcome _ in sign language, so he just smiles back and hopes that’s good enough. 

There’s a sudden ruckus across the room, and they both turn towards the noise. A group of middle aged men in sweat-stained undershirts and Bermuda shorts are moaning and groaning at a waitress that’s climbed up on a nearby chair to change the channel on the television.

“We was watching that, lady!” One of them crows. The waitress ignores him and continues flipping through the channels in rapid succession.

“Yeah, that was  _ The Three Stooges _ , Lena!”

“Take the slapstick away from a Jersey father…” Bucky pops an ice cube into his mouth from his glass when Clint looks back at him, eyebrows raised.

The waitress hops back onto the floor, her flats slapping against the tile. Clint barely takes notice of the way Bucky flinches at the sound. 

“Eat your sausage and shut up, Ed,” she shoots back at the table of men, still complaining, though quieter now.

Lena the waitress turns to the TV, arms crossed over her waist apron. On the screen, causing Clint to nearly fall from the booth, is the logo for the Game Show Network, followed by that unmistakable voice of Johnny Jacobs.

_ “Coming to you today from the good old Jersey Shore, this is  _ The Dating Game _! Now please welcome our host, Jim Lange!” _

“I didn’t know it’d be out so soon! Sam’ll be P.O.’d he missed this,” Bucky says, barely able to contain his laughter.

Clint’s cheeks feel like they’re on fire as he watches the show unfold. He suddenly hopes the camera doesn’t actually add ten pounds. Or maybe he does; he always was on the skinny side. It’s as ridiculous as he knew it was going to be, the questions Daisy reads from her small handful of flash cards cringe-worthy and embarrassing. But Clint can’t pull his eyes away, and judging from the silence on the other side of the table, neither can Bucky.

Daisy really is beautiful, with her rosy cheeks and wide, lined eyes, but Clint still doesn’t think he’s going to be calling her anytime soon. That beauty only seemed to go skin deep, unfortunately. 

What he really can't stop watching is Bucky. Bucky, sitting there in his bell-bottoms and almost-bare chest, his wind-swept hair, legs crossed like he’s a woman with a desk job, leaning over and laughing into Sam’s ear, then in Clint’s.

“Bruce Springsteen, huh? I’m glad I didn’t win after all.” He lightly kicks Clint’s foot beneath the table. “I’m happy with my Farah Slacks, which never need ironing, you know, and my Duracell-powered Mallory shaver.”

Surprised, Clint looks away from the TV, where the clan of dads are pouting into their plates of corned beef hash. He hates Springsteen too?

Bucky frowns at whatever’s on his face. “Oh no,” he says gravely, “You thought that was blasphemy, didn’t you? You like Springsteen?”

He  _ gulps _ , and Clint can’t help but laugh at him. “No, no, I think we’re soulmates.”

About twelve different emotions pass over his face, but he doesn’t say anything, and Clint is left warm and embarrassed. Sometimes he says the right things, but most of the time...

When their round ends, dissipating into a commercial for Cream of Wheat, Clint chugs the rest of his water until the melting cubes of ice knock against his teeth. When he lowers the glass, Bucky is watching him, leaning back against the booth with his arm slung over the top of the ripped seat.

“What?” Clint asks, almost a little breathlessly. He shifts where he sits, pulls his wallet from his back pocket. He still can’t decipher the look on Bucky’s face. He shouldn’t have said that. How come he’s as smooth as fucking butter when it comes to ladies but he’s a mess with everyone else?

“Wanna go see a movie?”

The question surprises Clint more than it should.  _ Chill the fuck out, he still wants to hang out with you. _

“Uh, sure. Yeah.”

Bucky nods, and his hair bounces with it. He slides out from his seat and Clint follows suit. He’s got a dollar out and is about to throw it on the table when Bucky grabs his wrist. The touch sends a shiver up his arm he hopes Bucky can’t feel.

“I asked you to breakfast, huh? I’m payin’.”

Clint’s gonna go home at the end of the weekend not with a sunburn, but a permanent blush on his cheeks. Meeting Bucky has not been good for Clint’s complexion.

So Bucky pays, and is completely oblivious to the way all the girls behind the counter with their cigarettes and their bubblegum are staring at him like he’s a circus freak. The way he smoothly gets his money from his wallet and hands it to the teenager behind the cash register is something to admire, Clint thinks, not something to gawk at. He pays the check, hands their waitress her tip, puts some spare change in the jar, and grabs a couple mints from the dish.

“Have a good day, ladies.”

He smiles at them and Clint doesn’t think he’s met anyone as cool as Bucky Barnes. Natasha’s definitely got some competition; Clint might just be a little bit in love.  _ But don’t say  _ that _ out loud. _

Bucky hands him a mint when they’re outside, and throws his own back.

“Are these the kind with the jelly in ‘em?”

“I wouldn’t have taken them if they weren’t, pal.”

Oh, yeah. He’s in love.

He follows Bucky out of town and back down the boardwalk into Asbury Park. It looks different in the daytime, he notes. Less crowded, less exciting. It seems the more interesting people come out at night.

There aren’t any men holding hands this time around.

Bucky stops in front of a little white hole in the wall place, with crumbling paint and a marquee that reads  _ BARONET THEATRE _ . The name also resides on the roof in large, crooked lettering. It looks like it’s one box office flop away from getting torn down.

“What’s good?” Bucky asks the young girl behind the glass, with her feet propped up on the desk and in the middle of blowing a bubble of gum bigger than her head.

When the bubble finally pops and wilts, she twirls the limp piece of gum around her forefinger and says, “ _ Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory _ , I guess.” But the second she notices Bucky’s missing arm she’s sliding her feet off the counter and leaning forward to get a better look through the plexiglass window. “Holy shit, man, were you in ‘Nam?”

Bucky still smiles at her, though it doesn’t reach his eyes, and hands her three bucks. 

“We’ll take two tickets.”

When the girl pushes the two tickets under the glass, her mouth hanging open wide enough her gum is on the verge of falling out, Bucky snatches them up and hands one off to Clint.

When they’re in the lobby, Clint stops Bucky with a hand on his arm, much like he did in the diner to stop him from paying. He seems like the kind of guy who doesn’t let the stares and comments bother him, but there’s only so much a guy can take in one day.

“Hey, are you okay?”

The obvious tension drains from him, and when he smiles at Clint, it’s real and bright and makes Clint feel equally better. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. Thanks.”

Someone clears their throat, and it startles Clint more than he’d like to admit. The usher is watching them from his podium.

“I’ll get the popcorn,” Bucky says in his ear and heads for the concession stand.

Clint swallows. The usher, Marv, as his nametag says, takes his ticket and tears it in half. When he hands the bottom half back to him, he tells Clint, “There's a time and a place, son. This ain’t that kind of movie theater.”

He furrows his brows at the man. This isn’t—what? 

“Sorry?”

“Just looking out for you, son.”

He nods to where Bucky is still at the counter, his back to them. Still confused, Clint thanks him and heads into the theater. The room is deserted save for an older couple close to the screen and a group of kids throwing popcorn and candy at each other by the fire exit. Clint takes a seat in the little alcove by the double doors and rests his feet on the chair in front of him.

He’s still mulling over what Marv the usher said when Bucky finally joins him, making a little pleased sound when he finds Clint so quickly, and climbs over the seats carefully to sit down at his left.

“I didn’t know what you like on your popcorn so I just got it plain.”

He joggles the cardboard bucket and tilts it invitingly in Clint’s direction. Clint shoves his hand in with a smile. 

“Thanks.”

When Bucky tucks the bucket between his hip and the armrest, grabbing his own handful, he cocks his head a little and asks, “You okay, pal?”

But Clint doesn’t get a chance to explain before the lights are going down and they’re thrown into complete dark. The group of kids cheer, and in the few seconds after they quiet down and before the movie starts, Clint feels unavoidably like he’s alone with Bucky, suddenly. It makes his palms itch and he wipes his hands on his thighs.

This almost feels like a date, and that wigs Clint out more than what the usher said, whatever he meant by it, he still doesn’t know.

It doesn’t help that, halfway through the movie, when their popcorn bucket is empty and shoved under their seats, Bucky takes his hand over the armrest like it’s nothing, and he doesn’t let go until the lights come back up.

Sweaty, head swimming, Clint follows Bucky out of the dim theater and into the bright, bright lobby. They pass Marv, and Bucky nods at him, like they share a secret. The guy nods back, then nods at Clint. Clint doesn’t nod back. He doesn’t think he shares the secret, whatever it is.

When they get outside, the noon sun hot and beating against the backs of their necks, Clint says to the sidewalk beneath their feet, “Thanks. For breakfast, and...the movie.”

Bucky beams his sunshine smile, flashing his snaggletooth, and signs  _ Any time, friend _ .

He’s completely forgotten what the usher said to him, and he has no idea what the movie was even about, because he can’t stop thinking about the way Bucky took his hand, right there in the movie theater. It might have been pitch black, and they might have been by themselves in the back corner, but still. Either this guy is brave as hell, or he’s got a death wish. When he went out with Andy from the comic shop he could barely shake his hand without feeling like everyone knew what they were up to.

Well. He’s more than certain now that Bucky Barnes is queer, but now the question of  _ was that a date? _ is rattling around his brain like a pinball. His heart feels like it might just beat right out of his chest and land on the sidewalk to fry like an egg.

Bucky looks as unbothered as ever, walking beside him with his hand in his pocket and a casual, almost unknowing smile on his lips. LIke he’s got nothing to worry about.

Where’s that confidence now, huh? Hiding? Because Clint could really use some of it.

Bucky’s confidence may not be rubbing off on him at the moment, but his chill definitely is, because the longer they’re walking together the more Clint begins to feel like a human being again. And that what Marv the usher said was probably nothing to worry about.

On the way back to the hotel, because after a while he realizes that’s where they’re going, Clint notices something he hadn’t noticed before: Bucky’s silhouette isn’t just a little lopsided, but he walks that way too. He saw it when he was watching their shadows as they walked. He lists a little to the right like he’s overbalanced. Clint knows people like Daisy must hate that, and that makes him love it. Clint conspicuously rounds Bucky so he’s standing on his right side, and that makes Bucky smile. Clint wonders if he noticed the way Clint still reads peoples lips sometimes, and if he feels similarly about it.

He also wonders if Bucky is going to take his hand again, or if he’s going to pretend that didn’t happen, like Clint thought he would with last night. 

Bucky lists a little to the right, and if their hands brush, Clint just blames it on that.

It turns out their room is the one right next to his and Natasha’s, but unlike their room, Sam isn’t asleep on one of the beds.

“Where’s Sam?” Clint asks when Bucky shuts the door behind them. He’d say he’s disappointed since he barely knows anything about the guy, but he thinks that would probably be a lie. And he doesn’t want to lie to Bucky.

He’s glad to be alone with him again. That’s the terrifying truth.

“Renting a surfboard and probably making a fool of himself.”

Bucky rolls out his shoulder, and then his neck, and sits down on the edge of the bed nearest the door. Clint sits down on the other.

The room smells like Aqua Velva and marijuana, and it’s considerably messier than his and Natasha’s; it looks like they’ve been here two weeks instead of two days. Bucky doesn’t apologize though, and Clint is glad. It feels lived in. He likes it. He likes Sam and Bucky. He likes  _ Bucky _ .

He might even more-than-like him, but he’s known him for less than a day so he’s definitely insane. The guy is a  _ stranger _ . Is this what love at first sight is like? That he hears about in the movies? Or is he just being ridiculous?

Why is a trip to the Shore sending him into an existential crisis?

“Surfing seems hard,” he says, for lack of anything better. And then he mentally rolls his eyes. If they’re flirting then he’s really doing a bang up job. It's no wonder Andy from the comic shop never called him back.

But either Bucky doesn’t notice how stupid the comment sounds or doesn’t care because he says, “Probably not as hard as archery though, right?”

He’s come to the realization that flirting with other guys is like playing ping pong; he just has to try not to miss the ball and he should be fine.

“I wasn’t lying when I said I wasn’t very good at it,” Clint kicks off his shoes and pulls his feet up.

Bucky laughs in his carefree way and lays back, kicking his own shoes off as he goes. He rests his head against his pillow and scratches idly at his stomach. His dog tags slip down his chest and settle beneath his stump of a shoulder that Clint can just barely see in the sleeve of his Dacron shirt.

Clint does not stare. But he does go from sitting on the end of the bed to sitting on the edge so he can face him. Be closer to him.

Bucky turns his head and smiles. He has a fantastic smile, snaggletooth and all. “Do you like it?”

Clint does not stare at the dimple in Bucky’s chin, just visible beneath his five o’clock shadow, that he hadn’t noticed until now. 

“Huh?”

“Archery.”

And he definitely doesn’t stare at the freckles on his nose, so faint that only the sun could’ve brought them out. Natasha gets the same ones, on her shoulders.

“Oh, yeah. I think it’s really cool.” He's not lying, but he doesn’t think he could even explain to Bucky what a quiver is right now. Is he high? He feels high. “What about you? They said you were a writer.”

Bucky rolls his eyes up to the ceiling, breaking their strangely intense staring contest, and Clint feels like he can breathe again. Well. Seems like the blue-gray of his eyes has the same effect on Clint as one of his joints must have on him.

“ _ Were _ is the key word. it’s kinda hard to use a typewriter with only one hand, you know.”

Clint’s chest clenches at that. “You’re probably right. Have you tried, like, writing freehand?”

Bucky reaches across his chest and grabs his dog tags, stuffing them in his shirt. He starts kneading his shoulder with the palm of his hand. If he’s in pain he doesn’t show it. He still doesn’t look away from the ceiling. 

“I was a leftie when I shipped out. Never did learn to use the correct hand, as all my teachers would call it.”

And that makes Clint smile. “Can I tell you a secret?” Bucky finally looks over at him again, that amused glint back in his eyes. “I’m left-handed too. I managed to graduate without being converted.”

Bucky reciprocates his smile. “Another thing we have in common.”

Clint doesn’t mean to stare, but Bucky’s staring right back, so he thinks it’s okay this time.

“Can I ask you something?” Bucky says eventually, quiet enough to match the atmosphere of the room but not too quiet that Clint’s hearing aids can’t pick him up.

“Anything.”

It’s true, too; he thinks he’d answer any questions Bucky throws at him. He doesn’t know what that means.  _ He’s definitely insane. _

“How’d you lose your hearing?”

He definitely wasn’t prepared for that though. No one’s been brave enough to ask him that since he got his first pair of hearing aids after high school, when people finally realized they could talk to him and he’d talk back. Now everyone just stares and occasionally says something insulting.

“Shit, I’m sorry, you don’t have to answer that.”

“No, no, it’s cool,” Clint waves him off, but that phantom pain has started up in the back of his head, as if on cue. He hasn’t felt it in a long time, and he squeezes his eyes shut against it. “Uh, I had an accident when I was nine or ten.” It was the week before his tenth birthday, actually, in the quiet hours between getting off the bus at the end of the school day and suppertime. “My dad, you know.”

Clint opens his eyes, his temples throbbing, and sees the horrified, dawning realization spreading over Bucky’s tan, unshaven face. 

“Clint, you don’t gotta, really.”

But he waves him off again, despite the sick swirling in his stomach and the impending psychological migraine. 

“I know how you lost your arm, so it’s only fair that I tell you how I lost my hearing.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t know how I lost my arm.”

Clint frowns at him. “You didn’t lose it in Vietnam?”

Bucky tries to keep a straight face, but his mouth is trembling. 

“I’m just a big Ernest Hemingway fan.”

Clint stares at him. “Don’t tell me that was a  _ Farewell to Arms _ reference.”

“Sure was.”

Clint laughs, sudden, and the pain in his head goes away. 

“Don’t quit your day job, buddy.”

“Hey, I saw the opportunity and I took it. And you laughed, so I guess it worked. No one laughs when I make jokes about my arm, except Sam. They all get real uncomfortable, you know.”

“Oh, I know. Trust me.”

Bucky says  _ I do  _ in sign language and a little flutter erupts in his belly in place of the anxious roiling. He’s not used to people outside of his immediate circle of friends knowing sign language. It’s refreshing.

He swallows. “If I just told you it was because of my dad, would you understand?” The pain doesn’t return.

_ Yes,  _ he signs,  _ My dad is the reason I hate being called James. _

Clint knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t help smiling at that. And Bucky smiles back. They do a lot of smiling at each other.

Sitting here in this air-conditioned hotel room on the Jersey Shore, in a bed that’s almost too small for him, talking with someone who probably understands him better than even Natasha, Clint thinks he feels more content than he has this entire impromptu weekend getaway so far. He even thinks he might prefer this to the beach.

Bucky tells him, if hesitantly, about his two years in Vietnam, and how that’s where he met Sam. He tells him about the Purple Hearts they went home with, and the reason Sam got one being a busted knee that gives him grief when it rains.

Clint tells him about his job at Tony and Rhodey’s record shop, and Natasha’s at the Chatterbox.

Bucky tells him about his part-time job at Sam’s dad’s garage and how he manages to fix cars with only one hand.

Clint tells him how his parents wouldn’t pay for hearing aids after the accident, and how he had to learn sign language on his own.

Bucky tells him about his three younger sisters.

Clint tells him about his one older brother.

Bucky tells him about the nightmares he sometimes gets, and Clint tells him about his own.

There’s only one thing they don’t talk about, but it doesn’t exactly feel like the elephant in the room anymore so Clint doesn’t bring it up.

They eventually lapse into a comfortable silence on their respective beds, in mirrored positions, and Clint is actually dozing when Bucky swears softly, breaking the moment and startling Clint back to full consciousness. When he looks over, Bucky is kneading his left shoulder again, but there’s a wrinkle between his eyebrows, one that obviously says he’s in pain now.

“You okay?”

Bucky snaps his eyes open, and he actually looks guilty, though he doesn’t move his hand. 

“Sorry, pal. Thought you were asleep over there.”

He’s actually been messing with his shoulder the whole time they’ve been talking, Clint thinks. Messaging the stump, rolling his neck, but Clint didn’t think anything of it, and he hasn’t said anything until now.

He pushes himself up in bed, his socks slipping against the comforter. “You didn’t answer the question.”

Bucky sighs and rolls himself into a sitting position too, but not without a fair amount of wincing. “Just—phantom pains. I get them all the time.”

Just like the pains Clint gets in his head sometimes. This is starting to get weird.

“Why don’t you light up?”

“You don’t like it.”

Clint never said it out loud but… he’s right. He’s never liked the smell of pot, definitely doesn’t like smoking it no matter how much Tony tries to make him, and that almost makes him feel bad. 

“No, I don’t mind, really.”

Bucky gives him a wholly unimpressed look that reminds him so much of Natasha that he almost laughs.

“Really!”

Bucky stares at him a second longer, then shakes his head. “Nah, I’m sick of it anyway. I never had a taste for marijuana. Sam’s ma got me started on it; she’s got a bum knee like him.”

He’s messaging the stump of his left arm with a practiced hand, but Clint isn’t sure how much it’s really helping—his temples look shiny with sweat despite the room being as cool as an icebox. He thinks about how Natasha sometimes rubs the back of his neck when he gets one of his headaches and gets off the bed.

Bucky watches him with his open, honest eyes, pain clear on his handsome face, and it hurts Clint to see him like this when he’s only known him to be calm, cool, and collected.

“I know the pain is mostly in my head,” he tells him when Clint stands awkwardly at his bedside, sounding more like a child than an Army veteran.

“Scoot,” he says, ignoring him, and Bucky shimmies closer to the foot of the bed. Clint sits down gently behind him, not entirely sure what he’s doing. “Just ‘cause it’s in your head doesn’t mean you’re not feeling it.”

That’s something Natasha used to tell him after high school, before he moved out, when his mom would hide the Bufferin and told him to suck it up. Clint stares at the back of his head and wonders just what he’s doing, and if he’s crazy for doing it. This is the weirdest case of infatuation ever, probably.

“No funny games, right? Because my pops took me to this specialist in Philly who—”

“Nothing like that,” Clint cuts him off and brushes Bucky’s hair away from his left shoulder, though it’s not exactly long enough to drape over his right. He places his hands on the junction of his neck and presses his thumbs into the spot above his spine. He’s not sure what this would do for his shoulder, but it’s what he knows, and he likes the way Bucky shivers under his touch.

“Is that helping?”

Bucky drops his head to his chest. “Not really, but it sure feels good.”

Clint moves his hands further down Bucky’s shoulders, and Bucky finally drops his hand away. Clint digs his fingers into his shoulders, and Bucky lets out a groan. His shirt sticks to his back with sweat.

“What does it feel like?” he asks him, and the question seems too quiet.

Bucky hums. “Like someone ran over my arm and won’t back off it. Except there’s no arm.” He rolls his shoulder again, and Clint moves with the motion. “Sometimes if I close my eyes and imagine my arm still there it helps, but. Not always.”

Clint doesn’t move his hands, just holds on like they’re in a conga line. His skin is so warm beneath his shirt, and he smells like Old Spice. Bucky won’t know if he’s staring at the back of his head, right?

“What if you tried telling your brain there is no arm?”

“Huh?”

“Like—” Clint takes a breath and cups his palm around Bucky’s stump, letting that strange confidence wash over him again like he’s summoning power from some unearthly source. “Do you trust me?”

Bucky shivers again. “Would I be crazy if I said I did?”

Clint smiles a little.  _ God.  _ “Probably. Just focus on my fingers,” he tells him, repeating what Natasha has told him dozens of times before when she has her little talons jabbed into the base of his skull. He digs his nails into the no-doubt sensitive skin of his shoulder, into the warm scar tissue, and Bucky jumps like he stuck his finger in an electrical socket, but he stays put.

Clint has no idea what he’s doing, but somehow he knows it’s right. He squeezes a little harder. Bucky makes a noise in the back of his throat and fists the blankets in his right hand. Clint counts silently, like Natasha does, until Bucky’s wrenching himself out of his grip.

“Jesus  _ Christ _ ,” he says, a little breathlessly. He cradles the stump of his shoulder and twists on the bed so he’s facing Clint. “Where the fuck didja learn  _ that _ ?”

He still looks like he’s in pain, and the hollow of his throat is shiny with sweat, but there’s a little tug at the corner of his mouth. Clint rubs his clammy palms on his thighs. 

“Natasha.”

Bucky huffs. “She seemed like a little sadist. Knew it the moment I saw her red head.”

Clint grins. Oh, yeah, they’d get along swimmingly. “That red head is full of good ideas. Sometimes.”

“Well, I feel better,” he messages his shoulder, gentler now.

“Really?”

“Yeah. My nonexistent arm doesn’t hurt anymore, just my shoulder,” his eyes look clearer, despite the furrow in his brows. “Which is gonna be bruised to hell and back, thanks to you.”

Clint rubs at the back of his neck. “Sorry.”

“No,” Bucky lets go of his shoulder and touches Clint’s knee. “Thanks. Seriously.”

“Anytime.”

Bucky is… very close. Close enough Clint can smell the Altoids on his breath that he was sucking on during their walk back from the movie theater.

And then Clint opens his big dumb mouth.

“Are you gay?”

But Bucky doesn’t seem phased. “As the Macy’s Day Parade. You?”

Clint swallows. He sounded so sure of himself, but all Clint can offer him is, “I think so.”

Something passes over Bucky’s face other than pain, and he leans back a little. “You think so?”

His skin is definitely melting off his skull. He’s never said any of this out loud before. “It’s confusing,” he tells the patterned bedspread. “I know I like— _ guys _ . I’m pretty sure I do, at least. But I like girls too, you know? I’ve dated enough of them and slept with them to know I do. But I went out with a couple guys before and I think I liked it just as much—maybe even moreso, even though I’ve never done anything else with them—”

“Clint,” Bucky laughs, resting his hand on his shoulder. Now it’s Clint’s turn to shiver, “ _ Breathe _ . You can like both.”

Clint feels stupid as hell when he asks, “You can?”

Bucky squeezes his shoulder and shakes him a little. “ _ Yeah _ , pal. Sam does, and so does my best friend back home.”

Clint doesn’t know any queers except for the guys he tries, and fails, to go out on dates with, and Bucky’s friends with two of them? There must be something in the water over in Hoboken. 

“Huh.”

Bucky’s hand slides to the back of his neck, and he leans in again. His cheeks are red beneath his stubble, but that might just be because of Clint’s assault on his shoulder. 

“Have you ever kissed a guy before?”

Clint's stomach takes a swan dive all the way to his toes. 

“Uh—”

And then the telephone rings.

Clint flinches. Bucky drops his head and his hand along with it and reaches for the phone on the single nightstand. 

“Ten bucks says it’s Sam,” he says flatly, holding it to his ear. “Hello?”

It might even be Natasha, though he’s not sure how or why. He doesn’t know what he’d say if it was.

Bucky’s face contorts. “Yeah, I’ll hold.” Now the crease between his brows looks more worried than pained. He perks up suddenly like someone shoved a rod up his ass, then sags in relief, almost on top of Clint. Clint bites back the urge to reach out and touch him. How can someone like Bucky be sitting so close to him and not expect him to want to touch him? “Christ, Becca, tell the operator your name next time, huh? She said the call was coming from outta town and I thought it was gonna be Ma saying Steve’s in the hospital or something.”

He tucks the phone between his ear and his shoulder and signs,  _ Drunk _ . Clint gives a nervous sort of smile.

“Ain’t it only suppertime across the pond? Then why are you—” He listens for a few moments, then says, “Okay, fine, just be careful. No, don’t call  _ Steve _ , he’s got a piece due Monday morning. Don’t stay out too late, okay? No, don’t be a groupie, you don’t even know those guys. I don’t  _ care  _ if your roommate babysits the lead singer’s cat— _ Rebecca Juliette Barnes _ . That’s what I thought. I’ll call you when we get home. Okay. Love you, chickadee. Don’t bother Stevie.”

He hangs up the phone.

“Sister?”

Bucky rolls his eyes and settles his hand on Clint’s knee. “Yeah, she’s taking a gap year in London. She was telling me about this show she’s at at a local college. Some group called  _ Queen _ .”

“Queen?”

“Yeah, I dunno. Her roommate knows the lead singer. Freddie, or something. Some… local band or whatever.”

He’s looking at Clint like he wants to swallow him whole. Clint thinks he knows the feeling. Maybe they’re both batshit insane then.

Bucky leans in an inch or two. 

“Where were we?”

Clint finds himself leaning in too, pulled by some invisible force. “Well—”

“Clint!”

_ Natasha _ . Not on the phone, but right outside the door.

Clint scrambles to his feet, checking the back of his thigh into the corner of the nightstand and jostling the lamp. Bucky stays right where he is.

She pounds on the door. “Clint, I want lunch, c’mon.”

Chest heaving and hands definitely not shaking, Clint looks back and forth between Bucky and the door. “Um.”

Bucky gets up off the bed, smiling. “I’ll see you tonight.” And then he’s kissing his cheek. His beard tickles his skin.

Not trusting his voice one bit, Clint signs  _ see you later _ and flees from the room before he can see the flush he can feel engulfing his entire stupid head.

Natasha is waiting for him in the hallway, in a pair of hotpants and her bikini top, a wide-brimmed sun hat perched on her head. He grabs her elbow and steers her towards the staircase, which they descend single file.

“How’d you know where I was?” he asks her when they’re outside the hotel. His heart is more or less beating at a regular pace now, but he still signs along to what he’s saying as habit. There’s no way she could’ve known what they were doing—or almost did.

She shrugs as they walk. “Heard the two of you through the walls. They’re paper thin, you know.”

Aw, fuck, maybe she did then.

He must have a hell of a look on his face because she laughs, taking his hand. “Clint, relax. You’re allowed to make friends.”

Or maybe not.  _ Stop being paranoid. _

“I’m guessing Daisy was a bust. Saw her when I was getting breakfast and she looked pissed.”

She squeezes his hand, and he’s again overcome with the urge to just  _ tell her _ . It doesn’t come on often, but it still does all the same. If he can pour his heart out to some guy he met  _ yesterday _ , why can’t he just be honest with his best friend that he’s known half his life? She knows more about him than his own parents!

There’s definitely something wrong with him, and it’s not the queerness.

“She, uh, had a problem with my ears. You know.”

“Ugh, really?” She sounds exasperated. “Sorry, babe, I hate when people are like that.”

“Me too.”

He actually doesn’t mind all that much. Because of Bucky. But he doesn’t tell her that.

They eat lunch at the same hole in the wall they did yesterday after the show, sharing a glass of Coke this time and working their way through a personal pizza, and the feeling doesn’t go away. It seems worse now, as he watches Natasha enjoy her food and tap her foot to the muffled radio that he can barely hear, content and oblivious. He’s afraid every time he opens his mouth to take another bite that the words are just going to tumble right out.

But, by some miracle, he survives through lunch. They decide to take a stroll along the boardwalk after, walking off the pizza they just inhaled. Natasha tells him about how she caught  _ The Dating Game  _ on the television at the café she got breakfast at and how funny it was. She tells him she’s proud of him. She tells him how hot Sam and Bucky are. She tells him he was the ugliest of the bunch.

He laughs and smiles and answers when appropriate, and has no idea how she hasn’t picked up anything from him by now. Natasha, who can practically read his mind. Too much time in the sun, probably, like she said.

They stop at a cart selling Italian ice and they both buy a cherry cone, and eat them leaning up against the wooden railing of the boardwalk. They lick at their shaved ice looking out at the ocean, companionably quiet, sweating a little bit, and then Clint spots Sam Wilson down on the beach. He’s got a red and white surfboard under one arm and his other hand is on the elbow of some guy that’s standing almost toe to toe with him. His smile is brighter than the dog tags that are glinting in the sun against his dark chest.

Clint thinks of what Bucky told him—about how Sam likes both. Sam likes girls  _ and  _ boys, and there he is, flirting with a boy right there out in the open. When he chances a glance at Natasha, he finds her watching them too. He can’t read her face, not like she can read his, but his heart rate picks up again all the same. He knows she’s seeing exactly what he is.

And then—

“Clint, I’m a lesbian.”

His Italian ice drops from his hand and lands in the sand somewhere below. Natasha watches it fall, and hands him her cone wordlessly. He takes it, hands numb.

“You’re—uh,” he says to the cherry syrup. When she doesn’t say anything further, he looks at her and watches her eyebrows disappear into the shadow of her sunhat.

And then he laughs, a little crazily, all the tension bleeding out of him at once. He feels lightheaded and shaky, like he just had a near death experience or something. Like he just got off a rollercoaster. Natasha’s eyes narrow the longer he laughs, but he can’t seem to stop because  _ what the fuck Natasha’s queer. _

_ She’s queer, just like I am. _

He throws the second cone of shaved ice onto the beach and pulls her into a rough hug. She’s as limp as a ragdoll.

“What the fuck,” she says.

He lets go, keeping her at arm's length. He feels like if he smiles any wider his hearing aids are going to fall out. 

“Me too.”

It seems like the easiest thing in the world now.

“What?”

“Me too! I’m—I like both! I like  _ guys _ , Tash, I like—“

She clamps her hand over his mouth, looking around. “Jesus, Clint, do you want to get a skywriter?” And then she lets go, and she looks more vulnerable than she has her entire life. “Really?”

The smile slips from his face, but he still feels like he’s walking on air. He takes her hands in his, squeezing so tight. This is the best day of his fucking life.

“Really,” he says, softer. “It’s—confusing. But I like both. I know that.”

She finally smiles. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you tell  _ me _ ?”

“Touché.”

They sort of just stare at each other for a while, and then she kisses him on the mouth. It’s not the first time she’s done that, and it probably won’t be the last. But now it doesn’t make him feel weird, doesn’t throw him into a tailspin. Because now he knows it’s completely platonic. Because Natasha’s a  _ lesbian _ .

He won’t be marrying her now, he doesn’t think, unless Natasha gets really desperate, but that’s  _ okay _ .

“How long have you known?” She asks.

He slings an arm over her shoulders and steers her in the direction of the penny arcade. They need to blow off some steam. 

“That’s a good question. I have no clue. What about you?”

“Since I saw Katharine Hepburn in  _ Sylvia Scarlett _ , I think.”

They laugh together, long and hard.

They spend the better part of an hour at the arcade. They catch  _ Willy Wonka _ at the Baronet, since Clint didn’t pay attention the first time. Then they sneak into a showing of  _ THX 1138 _ . They waste time at the Salvation Army. They crank call the record shop from a payphone in town. They blow almost ten bucks at an old fashioned candy shop, stuffing their pockets with sweets.

And all the while Clint thinks about how excited he is to see Bucky again tonight. He feels good, and he doesn’t care. Maybe he has feelings for Bucky. Whatever. That’s fine.

He and Natasha fuck around until the street lamps come on, then they haul ass back to the hotel like kids late for curfew. He tiptoes past Sam and Bucky’s room, but the nervousness now has an excited quality to it. He smiles to himself when he can hear them behind the door.

“I wonder where they’re taking us,” Natasha says when he shuts and locks their door. She’s already stripped to her skivvies. “A club, you think?”

He hasn’t thought about it, actually. So he just shrugs. “No clue.”

Clint puts on a button up, much like the one he wore under his suit yesterday, though not as loud, and Natasha unbuttons it so his collarbones are showing. She pulls on a pair of high-waisted bell bottoms and tucks a T-shirt into them that has the Pop-Tarts logo on it. There’s a knock at the door when they’re both fixing their hair in the bathroom mirror, bumping hips like they used to when they’d get ready together before school.

Natasha beams at him. He knows she feels good too. There’s no more secrets between them, just like it should be. And Clint knows he can let himself enjoy himself. 

“Our chariot awaits.”

Bucky and Sam are waiting for them in the dim-lit hall, beautiful grins stretching across their faces, and Natasha’s smiling just as wide, but Clint…

Clint feels like he’s going to pass out. Again.

Sam looks handsome as hell in his dobby shirt and shorts, but Bucky… holy shit. His tree trunk legs look about a mile long in pinstripe trousers and a silky shirt that’s unbuttoned even further than his own. He looks like someone who should’ve been up on stage during the Woodstock festival. He bites down on his tongue to make sure it’s not hanging out like a dog.

_ You’re staring _ , Bucky signs, though there’s a blush coloring his cheeks. All they’ve done since they met is stare and blush and  _ laugh, laugh, laugh _ .

“Oh,” Natasha says, looking them up and down, “Now I get it. So we’re going to a gay bar then?”

A chill runs down Clint’s spine, but one look at everyone’s faces tells him they’re all on the same page. They all know about each other. That both relieves and terrifies him. Is he that obvious? Is Natasha?

He’ll worry about that later. He’s just going to enjoy himself tonight, and turn this weekend into what Natasha dreamed it would be.

The four of them leave the hotel, and Sam and Bucky lead them all the way back into Asbury Park. Eyes follow them the whole way there, and how could they not? Such a flashy, diverse bunch like them. It doesn’t bother Clint as much as it probably should, whether it be because he’s got Natasha at his right or Bucky on his left or he’s just finally made a breakthrough with himself. But he doesn’t care. The staring stops once they pass through the casino that separates Ocean Grove from Asbury Park though.

The feeling of having walked into another dimension comes back the second they pass through the other end of the casino; no one’s paying them any mind here because  _ everyone here is like them _ . He can tell almost immediately. The families and the noisy kids are all gone now, replaced with lights and color and music, pouring out from radios and windows and passing cars on the streets. Women are kissing women, men are wearing blouses, everyone’s laughing and smiling and—

They fit right in.

“Saturday nights are always a big thing for queers here,” Sam tells them. Two men walk past them holding hands and sharing an ice cream cone. They smile at Clint and Clint smiles back. “It’s one place on the Shore we can be ourselves, you know?”

Natasha grabs his wrist. “I love it. The only lesbian bar in Passaic County got shut down last year. This is great.”

“It’s pretty cool, huh?” Bucky asks him, grabbing his other wrist. “First time I brought Steve down here I thought he was gonna flip his lid.”

“Was that when your mama found out about the two of you?” Sam asks from Bucky’s other side.

“Yeah,” Bucky laughs. “He wouldn’t shut up about the drag queens, so she ended up putting two and two together. My ma ain’t a stupid lady, you know.”

“Your parents  _ know _ ?” Clint’s eyes almost bug right out of his head at the mere thought.

“Our parents aren’t exactly good people,” Natasha supplies, not a single bitter note in her voice. That’s why he loves her.

Sam and Bucky throw their arms around the two of them almost at the same time. “That’s no problem,” Sam says. “There’s enough parents here for you guys.”

“Yeah, and Ma doesn’t mind adopting two more kids. She already snatched Steve up when his ma passed a couple years ago.”

Clint shares a look with Natasha. They both smile at each other and hug their new friends even closer. She was right about this weekend, and he’s not even too proud to admit it.

They walk like that until finally they reach their destination, a huge tan box of a building off the boardwalk and on the corner of a residential street, the ocean a speck in the distance. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think it was just a regular old hotel, but more people like them are milling about outside, hanging around on the sidewalk with their colorful clothes and excited voices, and Clint can hear the pounding of music coming from inside.

“Here she is,” Bucky says with a grand wave of his arm, “The M&K.”

The guy at the door lets them through with a smile and a nod, and it almost reminds him of Bucky’s exchange with the ticket guy when they were at the movies earlier that day. That feels like years ago.

Walking in Clint realizes this actually is a hotel, and they’re standing in the lobby. The girl behind the front desk, with her crew cut and overalls, gives them all chunky paper wristbands with little purple handprints printed onto them.

“Are we going to be renting any rooms tonight?” she asks in a thick Brooklyn accent.

Bucky visibly blushes and shakes his head. “We’re just gonna take advantage of the dance floors for now.”

“And the bar,” Sam says.

The girl tells them all to have a good and safe night. Natasha assures her they will, and gives her a flirty little wink. Thinking back on it, Clint realizes he’s never actually seen her flirt with a guy. Not seriously, anyway. He’s so  _ stupid _ , but it’s better late than never.

“So top floor is the dyke floor—the uh, the lesbian floor,” Sam stutters, “Sorry, red, that’s just what everyone calls it.”

Natasha laughs, loud and carefree.

Bucky throws his arm around Clint’s shoulders again even though everyone else has pulled away and says, close to his ear, “First floor’s for everyone,” he nods in the direction of a set of double doors across the lobby that’s spilling music and flashing lights, “Second floor’s for the guys and such, and top floor is for the girls and such.”

Sam’s nodding along seriously like Bucky just gave out the class syllabus. Natasha’s looking around with a pleased little smile, her arms crossed over her chest.

“And such?” Clint asks.

Bucky shrugs. “It ain’t all black and white, you know.”

He doesn’t know, but he’ll definitely remember to ask about it later.

“Well, where are we all headed?” Sam claps his hands together like they’re deciding which ride to ride first at the amusement park.

“I’m going to go hang out with the dykes,” Natasha announces, already heading for the grand, spiraling staircase. “We’ll rendezvous at midnight down here!” And then she’s gone.

“Alright then, fellas” Sam snorts, “Let’s go on up. No stairs though.”

So they follow Sam to the elevator across the polished floor, past people in feathers and shirts with symbols and phrases he doesn’t understand, girls with haircuts he’s never seen, guys with lipstick, and Bucky doesn’t remove his arm from around his shoulders. He likes it. He feels like if he were to let go Clint would get sucked up into this colorful crowd and be lost forever.

There’s a woman standing by the elevators when they reach them. She looks middle-aged, and she’s got a shaved head and suspenders and skin darker than Sam’s. She smiles when she sees them, wide and friendly.

“Look who it is!” She crows, throwing her hands up. “The dynamic duo. Haven’t seen y’all in a while, everything good?”

“Hey there, Miz Ellie,” Sam immediately leans in for a hug, and the woman wraps him up in her arms, almost lifting him off the ground despite being considerably shorter. “Everything’s fine. How you doing?”

“Oh, you know, baby.” She pats Sam’s ass. “Bucky! Get your sweet self over here, come on.”

Bucky lets go of him, laughing, and gets his own hug from  _ Miz Ellie _ . She squeezes him, fusses with his hair, asks about  _ that spitfire, Steve _ and then her eyes land on Clint. She shoves Sam and Bucky out of the way comically and puts her hands on his cheeks. Her palms are warm.

“And who might this be?” She asks, looking right in his eyes. He should be intimidated, he thinks, but all he feels is comforted. He decides he likes Miz Ellie. Though he doesn’t think there are many people here he  _ won’t  _ like.

“Clint, ma’am,” he says.

“Oh,  _ Clint _ . I saw you on the television this morning with my boys. Knew they’d be bringing you around sometime this weekend, knew it from the moment I saw you in that godawful suit.”

He’s getting less and less wary about people knowing about him. That’ll probably be dangerous when him and Natasha get home, but he’s not gonna think about that right now.

And he’s not going to think about how they have to leave tomorrow, which he forgot up until that very moment.

“This is one of the parents I was telling y’all about,” Sam says.

Miz Ellie’s eyes light up, and she pinches his cheeks before letting go. “You need a mama? I got you, don’t you worry, baby.”

He definitely doesn’t want to leave.

“Alright, you boys behave yourselves. You got your bands?” They flash her their wrists and she punches the button for the next floor up. She rummages around in the pocket of her slacks and pulls out a handful of wrapped condoms, shoving them at Sam and Bucky clumsily when they’re all packed into the elevator. They take them, shaking their heads like they’re used to Miz Ellie’s shenanigans, then she points at Clint. “You got a cock?”

He nods, whole body warm and tingly. She hands him a few and he stows them away in his back pocket.

“See y’all later!” she says when the doors shut in their faces.

When they’re alone, Sam and Bucky are watching him.

“She seems… nice.”

And then they burst into laughter. Bucky throws his arm across his shoulders again. He could get used to that.

“Miz Ellie’s been watching the elevator since this place  _ opened _ ,” Sam tells him.

“Yeah, and her wife’s the bartender for the top floor. She’s probably adopted Natasha by now.”

“Wife?” Do wonders never cease?

“Well, not  _ legally _ , you know,” Bucky says. “But what’s a piece of paper? They had a ceremony and everything a couple years back, down on the beach in the middle of the night. We all went.”

The doors open, and they’re greeted by a guy dressed like David Bowie with makeup like Twiggy, who kisses them all on the mouth in greeting and tells Sam and Bucky it’s good to see them again.

“You guys know everyone here?”

They pass door after door, some closed, some open, some with socks on the knobs, the patterned carpet littered with glitter and abandoned shoes. There’s music in the distance, with a different beat than what they heard downstairs, and it grows louder and louder the longer they walk.

“More or less,” Sam tells him, kicking a feather boa out of their way. “When Buck and I got home from ‘Nam we lived down here for a couple months to recuperate.”

“Why don’t you still live here?”

He shrugs. “We all gotta go home sometimes.”

Yeah. Right.  _ Home _ .

He’s not really looking forward to that, actually. He loves Rhodey and Tony and even Pepper. He likes the company of Natasha’s co-workers. But just thinking about spending another day in that stuffy little record shop, in his and Natasha’s breadbox of an apartment, sounds like the most unappealing thing in the world right now.

No wonder his parents never brought him and Barney down the Shore very often.

The room that the music is coming from looks like it was a pretty nice ballroom at one point, but the carpet has been torn up and old diner booths and tables now line the perimeter to make it look like an actual club. Another guy at the door checks their wrists and waves them off. Caught off guard by the sheer size of the room and the amount of bodies packed into it, Clint grabs the hem of Bucky’s shirt.

“Holy shit,” he says. He’s been to discos and dancehalls and fancy bars before, but nothing compares to this.

“That was a good  _ holy shit _ I hope,” Sam slaps him on the back.

“Definitely,” he says absently, eyes jumping around the room. There’s a bar that takes up almost the entirety of the far wall, a stage at the other end with a sound system setup pumping out some rock song he doesn’t recognize, a disco ball making the room sparkle. There’s the aforementioned drag queens, men that look like they just clocked out from their 9-5 with their suspenders hanging at their sides dancing with people that Clint thinks might be the  _ and such _ Bucky was talking about. There’s tables of food and little ice sculptures and a smoky haze above it all.

“It’s a lot at first,” Bucky tells him, squeezing his shoulder. Clint looks at him, and notices his cheeks are shimmering, like the makeup Natasha wears when she’s feeling particularly fancy. It makes his freckles stand out. He looks away, his throat dry.

“I’m gonna go get myself a drink,” Sam tells them, as if he could read his mind, already starting to inch his way towards the bar. “Y’all want anything?”

“I’ll take a beer. Your pick,” Clint says. He doesn’t like to drink, but he thinks this might be a special occasion.

“Same thing.”

Sam gives them a double thumbs up and disappears into the crowd.

Bucky shakes him a little. “C’mon, pal. The dance floor is calling our name.”

“I can’t dance,” he laughs, but he lets Bucky drag him away from the door anyway.

“You don’t need to know how to dance to do it.”

They find a spot right in the middle of the floor, right under the sparkling disco ball. The song switches over to that old Nancy Sinatra hit, and Bucky starts slapping his hand against his thigh in his own way of clapping along. Clint claps too, and soon they’re stomping their feet, and then their bodies are moving along with it, and everyone’s singing along, and Clint gets lost in it. 

They dance for what feels like hours, to songs Clint loves and some he’s never heard. They get pressed up close by sweaty bodies, pulled away by friendly hands, breathing in secondhand smoke and cologne and stale perfume. Bucky holds him close enough Clint can feel his pulse thrumming in every inch their bare skin touches, and twirls him like a girl. Someone goes around with a microphone and they sing a few lines of “Bernadette.” Clint knocks some guy’s glass right out of his hand at one point and when the three of them are on the ground picking up the shards Bucky’s swinging dog tags get snagged on a passing drag queen’s dress somehow, and they all laugh about it on the floor afterwards.

At the end of a Diana Ross song, both flushed and drenched in sweat and breathing hard enough to power a windmill, Bucky grabs Clint’s hand and says, louder than he needs to, “We should go find Sam!”

Clint finally realizes Sam never did bring them their drinks and he laughs. Bucky’s face erupts and he laughs too, and he thinks neither of them need any alcohol at this point. Bucky threads his hot, sticky fingers through Clint’s and tugs him in the direction of the bar.

They find Sam at the end of the bar, stool pulled close to the guy next to him, with his mouth pressed up against his ear. Upon further inspection Clint realizes it’s the same guy he and Natasha saw him with at the beach earlier.

“Let’s give them some space,” Bucky says and they take seats at the bar far enough away that Sam won’t see them.

They order two tall glasses of ice water and turn on their stools to face the crowd, who doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all. Clint cradles his glass in his hands, and rubs some of the condensation on his forehead and the back of his neck when it starts to sweat. Bucky does the same, then chugs half the glass in one go, water escaping the corner of his mouth and dribbling down his chin. Clint should find it gross, but he just watches the water trail its way over his bobbing Adam’s apple and into the neckline of his shirt.

He doesn’t care if he’s caught staring, because Bucky is just something that needs to be stared at, and he doesn’t feel bad about it at all. Not once did he feel uncomfortable dancing with him, afraid someone’s going to say something, because everyone in this room is in the same boat. They all more or less feel the same way. Not once this whole night did Clint feel like himself, and he decides that’s a good thing. He feels  _ better _ than himself. He feels like he should.

Bucky tucks his glass between his legs and catches him staring, of course he does, but he doesn’t say anything this time. He just stares right back, his blue-gray eyes sparkling under the lights, his mouth pink and wet, the sweat running from his temples washing the light makeup on his cheeks away. They’re both breathing in tandem, big heaving breaths, and Clint wants to reach over and touch him, wants to hold his hand again, wants to press his face into his neck like he did for three songs in a row.

And then someone squeezes their way in between them, their back to Clint, and the moment is broken. That seems to happen an awful lot.

“Well hello there, stranger,” says the stranger in a melodic British accent. Bucky shoves him out of the way and motions to Clint.

The man, short with a pencil-thin mustache and feminine features, wearing a white undershirt and high-waisted slacks, laughs and thrusts his hand out. Clint takes it and shakes.

“Goodness, I do apologize, chap,” he says, “Didn’t know you were with Barnes here.”

Bucky rolls his eyes and slaps the man on the ass. “Clint, this is Monty. We served together. Monty, this is Clint.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Clint. Weren’t you on the show as well? You were the winner, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, uh, that was me.”

Monty rests his arm on Bucky’s left shoulder, looking at Clint like he can’t believe it. 

“Three homosexuals trying for a lady’s hand on national television. I’ll be.”

Clint flushes and takes a sip of his water. It feels heaven-sent going down his dry throat. He didn’t realize just how thirsty he was. 

“If only she knew.”

Monty laughs.

“I didn’t know you were stateside, man,” Bucky says.

“Oh, yes, I had some business to attend to, then I decided to pop in on Peggy and her lovely lady. They cooked me a full American dinner and then suggested this place for a bit of fun.”

“Peggy is Steve’s best friend,” Bucky tells Clint, leaning forward a little on his stool. “She lives in New York with her girlfriend, Angie.”

Jesus, how many queers does he know? What the hell has Clint been missing out on this whole time?

“Well, fellas, I should be off,” Monty claps Bucky on the back. “Early flight and all that. Clint, good to meet you.”

And then he’s gone, and Bucky and Clint are once again alone, more or less.

“He seems fun.”

Bucky drains his glass and chokes a little on a laugh. “He’s batshit. Do you know how many times that little rat almost got our team blown up?”

Clint smiles. His head is starting to hurt, a subtle ache at his temples that he knows will only get worse the longer he keeps his hearing aids in.

“Hey, do you think we could—” he thumbs towards the door.

A knowing look passes over Bucky’s face and he stands. When he holds his hand out to Clint, he’s glad to take it again.

They weave their way back across the floor and out into the hallway where it’s cooler and quieter, thank  _ God. _ His clothes are sticking to him all over.

“You good?” Bucky asks when Clint slides down the wall to sit on the floor. “Need some air?”

Clint tugs on Bucky’s hand until he’s sitting next to him, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. “The music’s fucking with my hearing aids. Just needed to get out of there before I got a migraine.”

“Mm,” Bucky pulls their hands into his lap and stretches his legs out. Clint does the same.

The hallway is abandoned where they are, though he can hear faint voices coming around the corner past them. Clint unbuttons his shirt further and opens it up. He knows Bucky is watching him.

Blush, and stare, and laugh.

They sit like that, comfortable and quiet, for who knows how long. Eventually Clint sighs, content, and says, “Thanks.”

He thinks maybe Bucky didn’t hear him, but then he says, just as soft, “For what?”

Clint shrugs and squeezes his hand. This is the longest he’s held anyone’s hand, let alone a guy’s. Maybe he’s thanking him for that. He doesn’t say anything.

“You’re welcome.”

Clint smiles, then a thought hits him. “Hey, did you know when we met? That I was queer?”

“I had an inkling. Like Miz Ellie said, that fuckin’ suit.”

He snorts. “Nat too? Is that why you invited her tonight?”

Bucky hums. “Sam and I are like Basset Hounds for queers.”

That must’ve been why he was checking her out, when they met. He gets it now. But there’s one more thing.

“When we were at the movies, the ticket guy saw me touching you and told me  _ it’s not that kind of theater _ or whatever. What’d he mean by that?”

Bucky turns his head to look at him, his eyes soft. “There are queer bars, and there’re queer movie theaters. Except those are usually of the  _ adult variety _ , if you know what I mean.”

_ Ah.  _ “Huh.”

He doesn’t ask anymore questions, even though he has about a million more floating around in his head. He just wants to chill for a while. They’re quiet for a bit longer, until Sam shows up in the doorway to the ballroom. He looks just as flushed and happy as he knows the two of them probably still look.

“Samuel,” Bucky greets, tilting his head back to look up at him. “You abandoned us.”

Sam looks pointedly between the two of them, then down at their linked hands. He looks smug. “Mhm. Natasha’s waitin’ for us downstairs.”

_ Natasha _ . “What time is it?” He stands and pulls Bucky up with him, wishing he wore his watch.

Sam shrugs. “Dunno but it feels late.”

So the three of them hop back into the elevator and punch the button for the first floor.

“Where’s your friend?” Clint asks, a little zing of pleasure running up his spine at the fact that he can just ask something like that, while holding hands with a guy.

Sam smiles and scratches at the back of his neck. “Riley’s got an early train back to his base. We exchanged numbers.”

Bucky hip checks him. “Good for you.”

Miz Ellie isn’t at her post when the doors open, but Natasha is sitting at the bottom of the staircase she disappeared up when they first got there, her shirt untucked, her shoes off, hair a mess, pale throat covered in lipstick marks. The three of them kind of just stop and stare at her for a couple seconds.

“Damn, girl,” Sam whistles.

Natasha grabs her sneakers and pulls herself up by the handrail. She sways a little bit and then clomps her way over, her bare feet slapping against the tile. “Let’s go to the pool. Sharon says there’s a pool.”

So they follow her across the lobby, through the mixed floor, and out a pair of sliding glass doors next to the bar. And lo and behold there is a pool, as big as the lobby inside and teaming with more people. Though it feels more like a family barbecue out here than an old hotel-turned-gay-bar. There’s a record player playing old jazz hooked up to a speaker, a table full of food in the little patch of grass, and there’s Miz Ellie, donning a chef’s hat and apron, flipping burgers on a grill.

Natasha is already heading towards her. “God, I’m  _ starving _ .”

And then, without a word, Sam follows her. He’s not being obvious at all.

He and Bucky find an empty spot on the perimeter of the pool and sit down, taking off their shoes and socks and rolling their pants up to their knees. The water is freezing, but it feels amazing.

He hasn’t had a drop of alcohol all night and yet Clint feels like he’d probably fail a breathalyzer test anyway. Everything about Bucky is intoxicating. Two nights ago he couldn’t dream of holding hands with a guy in public, surrounded by people who are doing the same or have something in common with him. And to top it all off, no one’s looking at his ears, or Bucky’s arm—or lack thereof. Because here being different just means they fit right in.

He squeezes Bucky’s hand. Bucky squeezes back. Where girls hands are small and soft, Bucky’s is big and rough, and he likes it. He likes both.

They watch Sam and Natasha talking to Miz Ellie while she grills, one hand fisted on her hip, shoving burgers into their mouths. He and Bucky swing their legs around in the water, occasionally bumping into each other’s. There are two girls sitting on the edge of the diving board kissing. A third girl pops up from the water below them and pulls them in. Bucky laughs next to him, quiet and rumbling.

Clint kind of feels like he did before he came out to Natasha earlier that day; his heart is starting to pound against his chest, and he feels like a kettle that’s gonna start to whistle. He has no idea what’ll come out if he opens his mouth though.

_ What could it possibly be this time? _

Bucky leans in. “That—”

“I didn’t answer your question.”

He pulls back. “What?”

_ Oh, Jesus.  _ “Before. In your room. I didn’t answer your question.”

He expected Bucky to smirk, cocky, knowing, but that’s not who he is. Clint knows that now. He  _ blushes _ instead. His eyes grow a little wide. He leans in again and Clint can smell the sweat on him.

“What’s your answer?”

“I’ve never kissed a guy before.”

Bucky’s mouth twitches as Clint’s goes completely dry. They’re so close. Holy shit.

“How’s your arm?” Clint asks, because he’s stupid.

Bucky blows a startled breath through his nose, fanning Clint’s face with it. “Fine. How’s your ears?”

He can barely hear him over the music and the splashing and all collection of voices, so it’s a damn good thing he can read lips. “Fine. Head doesn’t hurt anymore.”

They’re staring again.

And then they’re kissing.

Clint has no idea who started it, but he’s definitely not going to be the one to end it. There are no gasps of horror, the world doesn’t come crashing down around them, so there’s really no reason to. Somehow his hands end up on Bucky’s thigh and Bucky’s hand has drifted up to the side of Clint’s face, his fingers ghosting over his hearing aid there like it’s nothing. Like it’s just another part of him.

Bucky’s mouth is as warm as his hand, but exceptionally wetter, and his facial hair is scratching Clint’s skin to no end. There’s some tongue, some teeth, and more than enough spit, and it’s  _ so fucking good _ . Clint kisses like he’s drowning, like he’s never kissed another person before in his life, but Bucky doesn’t care; he just goes with it.

Slowly, the longer they kiss, sound starts to melt away around them, until they’re in their own little quiet bubble, just the two of them, their hands on each other, their tongues in each other’s mouths, their feet in the pool. But all good things must come to an end, and it comes in the form of  _ Clint not being able to breathe. _

He puts a hand on Bucky’s chest and wrenches his mouth away. Bucky, still in the swing of it, smacks a kiss onto his cheek before he realizes they’re stopping and pulls back too. His chest is heaving beneath Clint’s hand, and he looks like he just ran a marathon.

_ I did that. _

Clint tries to say, “I can’t breathe,” but he’s not sure if anything comes out. He still can’t hear anything. Bucky’s smiling, his lips swollen and slick with spit, but there’s a little concerned furrow between his eyebrows. His mouth is moving, but there’s nothing coming out.

Clint shakes his head, works his jaw, taps on his hearing aids, and realizes the silence wasn’t a matter of euphoria, but that of his batteries dying. He laughs, startled, disbelieving.  _ Only him. _

“Are you okay?” Clint sees him ask, and he signs back,  _ Batteries died _ .

Bucky starts to laugh too, because what are the odds? Clint wishes he could hear him. So he leans in and kisses him again to get him to stop. It makes Bucky shut up really quick.

_ Want to go?  _ Bucky asks with a dopey smile.

One more quick kiss, just because he wants to, just because he can, and he lets Bucky pull him to his feet. They stuff their socks into their shoes and walk barefoot over to the little patch of grass where Miz Ellie and Sam and Natasha are still talking. Bucky says, both out loud and in sign language (probably so Clint isn’t lost,  _ God _ , he wants to kiss him some more), “The batteries in Clint’s hearing aids died. We’re going to go back to the hotel. Are you staying?”

“You’re deaf?” Miz Ellie asks, her eyes wide as saucers. Then  _ she  _ starts talking in sign language too!  _ Finally someone else for me to practice on _ , she says, her hands shaky and excited. But he understands her fine.

This weekend is not real.

Sam and Natasha tell them they’re gonna stay a while longer, and after hugging Miz Ellie goodnight he and Bucky make their way back through the hotel with their shoes in hand. They dry their feet on the lobby carpet because putting them back on, then they leave hand in hand.

There aren’t many people still out now that it’s past midnight, just a few couples here and there, some teenagers on bicycles. Clint may not be able to hear it, but he knows there’s probably still music playing.

Bucky lets go of his hand to ask,  _ Do you have extra batteries? _

_ No. _

Bucky rubs his jaw, then says,  _ Where can you buy them? _

_ Anywhere. _

They’re walking away from the ocean, in the opposite direction from which they came, and they’re heading deeper into suburbia. They walk on the sidewalk, passing shop after dark shop, until finally they see a lit building across the street, right next to a deserted McDonald’s. It’s a little white five and dime with a candy striped awning over the door.  _ Ben Franklin _ it’s called, and the sign in the window says it’s open.

Bucky looks at him and shrugs.

They cross the street. There’s another sign on the door that says  _ “Your everything store at the Jersey Shore!” _ There’s a teen girl sitting behind the counter when they go in, reading a book with two half naked women on the cover. She looks at them over her book. Bucky holds up his arm to show off his wristband, and Clint does the same. The girl nods.

“Do you only cater to queers?” Bucky asks.

The girl watches his hand but doesn’t seem phased. When she answers, Bucky translates for him, and he doesn’t have the heart to tell him he’s pretty good at reading lips.

“Only on the weekends,” she says. “If my dad finds out I keep this shithole open all night I’m fucked, so keep your mouths shut, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bucky nods and gives her a two-fingered salute.

There’s a display of batteries right near the front by all the other impulse buys, and Bucky disappears to the back of the store while Clint sorts through them. When he glances up at the cashier, she’s not even paying him any mind, she’s just reading her pulp and chewing on her nail. It makes him smile.

Bucky reappears when Clint finally finds the right size of batteries, two bottles of Coke in his hand and a bag of Doritos between his teeth. When he sets them on the counter, he plucks the package of batteries from Clint’s hands and puts them with them.

“No,” Clint says, already reaching for his wallet.

Bucky gives him a stern look and says, “I invited you out. Put your money away.”

Clint puts his hands up in mock surrender.

The girl is smiling to herself while she punches buttons on her cash register, and it’s all such a casual thing. Clint still isn’t sure this isn’t an elaborate dream. Bucky pays, again, and they take their snacks without a bag.

They pop a squat on the sidewalk outside and Clint replaces the batteries in his hearing aids. There is music playing, some old jazz song coming from a cracked window in the apartment above the convenience store, and Bucky is humming along to it while he opens up their bottles of Coke and bag of chips.

“Welcome back,” he hands him one of the bottles, and they touch the necks together and take a sip.

“Thanks.”

He thinks his hands might be shaking. When he looks over, Bucky’s is too.

They drink their Cokes, share a mini bag of Doritos, listen to the radio above them croon “Strangers in the Night.” There’s a breeze tonight, slight, and it cools the sweat drying in all of Clint’s nooks and crannies. He shivers.

“You’re a really good kisser,” Bucky tells him quietly, fishing for another chip.

Clint feels himself blush and he turns his face away, but Bucky turns it back to him with his cheesy fingers. And then they’re kissing again, and it’s better than the first time.

They walk back to the hotel after they finish their snacks, slow and leisurely. An early Sunday stroll. They’re quiet. They catch each other’s eye every once in a while and laugh. They enjoy each other’s company.

When Bucky and Sam invited them out tonight, this was not what he expected.

Vivian is in the lobby when they go inside, water the array of plants on the tables and in the windowsills with a little plastic watering can.

“Boys!” she calls when they start up the stairs, waving her hand. “Reminder you need to check out at six a.m. sharp!”

Clint feels his entire body deflate. “Yes, ma’am.”

She turns back to her plants.

He looks at the clock on the wall behind the front desk. They have to check out in only a few hours. The weekend’s almost over.

Bucky sees him and squeezes his hand when they’re outside his and Sam’s room. When the door is shut and locked safely behind them, he pulls Clint into a hug.

“We live less than an hour away from each other, you know,” he tells him, sounding like he’s trying to reassure himself more than Clint.

_ Less than an hour. _ That’s not bad at all, but what Clint is really worried about is if whatever they have here, right now, will survive outside the safety of this weekend. And will he be brave enough? To try and make it work when no one other than Natasha knows about him? Because home is not like here, not at all, and he wouldn’t want this to get ruined before they even get a chance to see where it can go.

“And it’s a really good area, too. Like—if you were worried about us visiting.”

God, it’s like he can read his mind.

Clint gives Bucky one last squeeze and tells them they should get some sleep. They strip down to their underpants and crawl into bed together.

They’ll worry about what they’re going to do in the morning.

*

**_SUNDAY_ **

Clint wakes up to someone shaking his shoulder. That someone turns out to be Sam, and when he sees Clint’s awake, he waves. Clint blinks at him. It’s still dark out, he sees through the sliding glass doors, and for a split second he thinks it’s still nighttime before he remembers they’re supposed to check out at six. He swallows down his disappointment as he pops in his hearing aids.

“Morning, man,” Sam says, already dressed. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed and tying up his shoes. Behind him, Natasha is fast asleep on her stomach. Sam looks behind him and laughs softly. “We had a sleepover last night, I guess. You and Buck seemed pretty comfortable.”

Clint resists the urge to hide under the covers. He gets up and starts making the bed. “Morning to you too. Where is he? Bucky?”

He motions towards the bathroom door. “Shower.”

When he strains his ear (hardy har har) he can hear the water running faintly. They seem to be already packed, their own suitcases sitting by the door. They still need to pack.

“Hey, I’m gonna go check us all out, then we’ll grab some breakfast?”

Clint props the pillow up against the headboard and stands up straight. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

When Sam’s gone, he pinches Natasha’s nose until she makes an ungodly noise and wakes up. Her makeup is smeared all over the place, and one of her tits is trying to escape her shirt.

“Morning, sunshine.”

She blinks and looks around the room like she doesn’t know where she is. “Ugh,” she says.

“Come on, we gotta leave soon.”

Natasha groans and sits up, her hair a rat’s nest on her head. “No more drinking. I’m gonna—” she burps, “—become a prude like you.”

“Being sober doesn’t make me a prude, asshole,” he kisses her on the cheek, cringing at her hangover breath. “It makes me responsible.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She crawls out of bed like a ninety-year-old woman, moaning and groaning as she fishes for her bra beneath the covers. When she’s on her feet she stretches and makes another super unattractive noise, but then she freezes, eyes on the bathroom door. Her lips curl back like the Grinch. “I’m gonna go pack.”

He really doesn’t know if he loves her or hates her.

The water to the shower shuts off just as Clint’s finishing up making the other bed, and a burst of steam and heat escapes when the door is opened. Bucky’s not naked, or even in a towel, thankfully. Because Clint isn’t sure how he’d react to...that. This weekend has already been chock-full.

But his hair is wet and pulled into a ridiculous little topknot and his shirt is sticking to him and that’s just enough to make Clint start sweating. Do they have enough time for him to jump in the shower too? 

“Morning,” Bucky’s smile is like the sunrise, and he crosses the room in three strides to hug and kiss him like they’ve known each other forever. Like they’re an old married couple.

The inside of Clint’s head sounds like a fax machine.

Bucky tastes like toothpaste and smells like shampoo and Clint thinks maybe, just maybe, everything’s gonna work out fine.

“Where are our sidekicks?”

Clint laughs. “Sam’s checking us out and Nat’s doing God-knows-what.”

“Good for her,” he leans in for another kiss.

Yeah, Clint can get used to this.

Their friends return soon enough, and they carry their luggage downstairs to the parking lot after bidding Vivian farewell. Clint keeps reminding himself this isn’t the end; it’s not like Bucky’s gonna just disappear when they leave the Shore.

And he’s not gonna sabotage this like he does with every girlfriend he’s ever had. Natasha will see to that.

Once their cars are packed they get breakfast at the McDonald’s he and Bucky spotted the night before, and they eat their cheap, greasy food sitting on one of the benches outside. Sam and Natasha tell them about their night while the sun rises, about how much they missed when they left. They don’t tell them about what they did once they left, but Clint is pretty sure they already know.

“We should watch the fireworks on the beach tonight,” Natasha says, sipping at her coffee and passing the styrofoam cup to Clint. It’s salty as hell so he passes it right back.

“Oh yeah,” Bucky steals a piece of Clint’s hashbrown and dips it into Sam’s ketchup. When he’s about to go in for another piece, he flinches. “Oh, shit.”

“You okay?” Sam laughs, mouth full.

“It’s Steve’s birthday.”

Sam stares at him for a second, then shrugs. “The butchershop on Park Ave needs their ad done by tomorrow right? I doubt he even remembered his own birthday, it’s chill.”

“Yeah but—” Bucky stands and rubs his hand on his shorts. Clint is suddenly afraid he’s gonna decide to leave right now. As if reading his mind, though, he says, “We should probably hit the road before dinner though. I think I told him I was gonna take him out.”

“Works for me,” Sam shrugs.

“Might as well take advantage of the day then,” Natasha says, finishing off the shitty coffee and standing. “Where to, gentlemen?”

They end up walking around a Kmart for a while, then putz around a local bookshop until lunch, not so much wasting time than savoring it, just enjoying each other’s company until they have to head back to the real world. Clint might not be able to hold Bucky’s hand, and they all get their fair share of looks, but it’s fine. They all still have a good time.

Lunch is sandwiches from a Kosher deli, and they eat them on the boardwalk while Sam does a dramatic reading from the copy of  _ The Picture of Dorian Gray _ Bucky bought for Steve’s birthday. After lunch they buy tickets to some horror movie Clint didn’t even catch the name of, but they leave laughing so it must’ve been good.

And then the first firework shoots off in the distance, and their watches tell them it’s nearing four o’clock.

So they head down to the beach, where there’s bonfires already going and twelve different songs are playing from twelve different radios. They forewent towels, but the sand feels so good on his feet when Clint shucks off his shoes under the boardwalk he doesn’t even care.

“I’m heading for the  _ water _ ,” Natasha announces, lifting her hair off her neck. Another firework is shot off from the other end of the beach and it explodes overhead in a shower of colors.

“I’m coming too, red,” and Sam’s jogging after her. Of course.

“Do you think they know?” Bucky asks, throwing his arm around his shoulders.

Clint laughs. “I think they might.”

A group of teenagers appear out of nowhere and hand them a pair of sparklers, which Bucky lights with the Zippo he keeps in his pocket. They wave them around like a couple of magic wands and throw them by their shoes when they start burning the tips of their fingers. The fireworks are really starting to pick up now, huge, colorful flashes in all different shapes and sizes.

“Ahh,” Bucky says after a particularly loud one that sounded more like a clap of thunder than a firecracker. “I forgot how much I didn’t like fireworks.”

The next one that goes off sounds like a barrage of bullets on a tin roof, and Clint gets it. He pulls Bucky by the hand further underneath the boardwalk, where the late afternoon sun can’t reach them and the sand is almost cold.

“Better?”

Bucky looks like a kid on Christmas when he says, “Yeah.”

Clint, in a bold move, tucks a stray piece of Bucky’s hair behind his ear and lets his hand linger on the side of his neck. Another firework whistles overhead, and in the quiet second before it bursts Bucky leans in and presses his mouth to Clint’s. Clint kisses him back, fervently so, and as he winds his arms around his back, slips his hands beneath the hem of his shirt, bright color pops like flashbulbs behind his closed eyes.

Clint kisses Bucky like it’s the only thing that matters in the world, and as he thinks about it, maybe it is. They stumble a little in the uneven sand. Clint can't get enough of him, of his sweet, hot mouth, the skin of his lower back that's sticky with sweat, the way Bucky is rubbing his hand up and down his chest. Clint wants to devour him, wants to swallow up this moment and take it with him and never forget what it tastes like. 

“Hey! What the hell is this?”

And then he remembers they’re in public. They’re not at the club or in the safety of their hotel room.

Clint pulls away so suddenly Bucky all but falls into him. He steadies him with his hands on his chest and they turn to find two guys, probably their age, standing at the edge of the boardwalk with cigarettes hanging from the corners of their mouths. They're glaring at the two of them with their fists clenched at their sides. Clint isn't sure which of them spoke, but he is sure of the fact that he feels like he’s two seconds away from passing out from shock. 

“I ought to call the cops on you,” says the guy in the gray swim shorts and Grateful Dead T-shirt. He sucks angrily on his cigarette and the glowing tip looks like a receding firework.

“Yeah,” says the second. He taps ash at his feet, narrowly missing his toes. “Polluting our nice beach like this.”

“I really don’t think we’re the ones doing the polluting, pal,” Bucky raises his eyebrows at their cigarettes. Clint can feel the way his heart isn’t jack-hammering in his chest under his hands like his is. Yeah, Bucky’s definitely got a death wish.

Clint bites the inside of his cheek. He has a sneaking suspicion he knows where this is gonna go, and he wishes some of that confidence would possess him right about now.

The first guy throws the white stick into the sand and squares his shoulders. Clint tightens his grip on Bucky.  _ Here we go. _

“What did you say, you fucking cripple?” 

“Real original,” Bucky doesn’t sound phased at all. Clint’s not sure if he should be impressed or fucking terrified. “I’m guessing you dodged the draft? Probably drove to Canada, right?”

The two guys share a look. He threw them off course with that.

“The war’s not over, you know,” Bucky keeps on going. “One phone call and you two—”

Clint doesn’t even see the fist coming their way until Bucky’s thrown back into the sand, almost taking Clint down with him. He’s holding his hand over his mouth and rolls over onto his side.

“What the fuck!” Clint shouts, startled. He looks between Bucky and the two assholes, who are nodding their heads and smiling like they just pulled an elaborate prank. The anger bubbles up in him so hard and fast he swears he sees red. The high five they share is what makes him burst. He punches them both in their smug faces, two for one, but he forgot to tuck his thumbs in like Natasha taught him and pain shoots up his arms on impact, and all three of them are left hissing.  _ Real smooth. _

Bucky’s back on his feet now, and he grabs the back of Clint’s shirt and tugs him away harshly. His bottom lip is split and blood is matted into the cleft of his unshaven chin. The sight makes Clint’s heart start beating a little harder, if that’s even possible. He’s probably gonna have a heart attack before the weekend’s officially over.

“Are we all even now?” He asks, Clint’s shirt still in his fist. He sounds  _ pissed _ . “Can we go back to enjoying the fireworks?”

Asshole #1 and Asshole #2 are both holding their wrists under their noses to staunch the bleeding, and there’s murder in their eyes. They both lunge at Clint and Bucky at the same time, and hitting the cold, stiff sand in the shade of the boardwalk feels like landing on concrete. They both get the wind knocked out of them, and in those couple of seconds when neither of them can breathe, the dynamic duo get in a few good blows at their faces. 

Bucky starts to fight back first, doing some karate move that ends up with him sitting on his guy’s chest. But that doesn’t last long, when he gets an uppercut into his left shoulder. Bucky falls off him, face twisted in agony. Clint tries that same move, but he’s not strong enough and it lands him a laugh and a fist to his own nose. He’s not sure if the crack he heard was bone or the explosion of fireworks. He sees stars nonetheless.

The guy on top of him says, “Looky here!” and before he knows it the world is thrown into complete silence. He tore out his hearing aids. He’s shouting in his face now, terrible names and insults, not knowing Clint is fully capable of reading his lips. Another punch lands on his jaw, and he tastes blood. His head is wrenched in Bucky’s direction, and he sees his guy twisting his arm behind his back, using his other hand to shove Bucky’s face into the sand. He shouts, not caring how loud he is, and shoves his guy off him, who hits one of the huge support poles underneath the boardwalk and crumples to the ground like a ragdoll. He slams himself into the jerk on top of Bucky and wrestles with him in the sand. And then they’re both on him, one punching, the other kicking, and  _ holy fuck they’re gonna kill me _ .

But they don’t. After a particularly hard kick to his gut that leaves him gasping, they stop, and Clint cracks his eyes open to find Bucky standing again, his arm held up against his stomach and nose bleeding like a busted fire hydrant. Asshole #1 is on the ground holding onto his balls, telling Clint Bucky just gave him a nice swift kick there, and Asshole #2 is cracking his knuckles.

He dodges Bucky’s first kick, but the second gets him in the solar plexus, and he stumbles. But he doesn’t fall.

And then he’s throwing a punch, looking like a character out of one of those martial arts movies his brother used to watch, and he hits Bucky in the side of his head. Bucky goes down like a sack of potatoes.

And he doesn’t get back up.

Everything goes dark.

When he wakes up, he isn’t on the beach anymore. The hospital room he’s in has piss-yellow walls, and he can smell antiseptic through his stuffy nose.

Bucky’s in the bed next to his, awake, watching him.

“Hey,” he says, but Clint still can’t hear him.

And then someone’s touching his ears, and he whips his head around so fast it makes him nauseous. But it’s just Natasha, helping him get his hearing aids back in. She looks like she’s been crying. When the world is finally unmuted, she says, “Hey, shit-for-brains.”

He looks back at Bucky, who’s got one of those little breathing tubes in his nose, then back up at Natasha. “Huh,” he says.

She laughs, sitting back down in her chair that’s been pulled up to his bedside. “ _ Huh  _ is right. How are you feeling?”

He thinks about it. He feels pretty bad. “Like I got the snot beat out of me. I passed out?”

“We both did,” Bucky says, sounding like he swallowed a handful of sand. “It ended the fight real quick though.”

Clint squints at him. “Why’d we pass out?” His brain feels like a record that’s being played backwards; nothing seems to make complete sense. He thinks he remembers Bucky getting punched, but they both did. A lot.

“Well,” Natasha says, “Bucky got himself a concussion. You passed out because you’re a pussy.”

Bucky laughs and then groans. “Shut up, don’t make me laugh.”

And then Sam is in the doorway, two cups of coffee in his hands. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty! How you feeling?” He hands one of the cups to Natasha and sits down on the foot of Bucky’s bed.

“Not too hot,” he notices now that Bucky’s arm is in a sling, and he remembers one of the guys twisting it behind his back. “Anyone wanna give me the rundown?”

“Well,” Sam starts, sipping his coffee, “You got a couple bruised ribs and a broken nose. Buck got a concussion, dislocated shoulder, and an equally broken nose. One of y’all got a fractured cheekbone too, but I don’t remember who.”

“That was Clint.”

“Ah.”

No wonder his face hurts so fucking bad. He didn’t even know you could  _ fracture your cheekbone _ . But he’s felt worse, and he knows Bucky has too, so he’s just glad they’re both alive. Because for a split second there he was almost certain they weren’t gonna make it through that.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Clint tells Bucky, feeling woozy and tired and sore. Bucky looks like he feels the same, but he smiles gently through his busted, swollen mouth. “Me too.”

“God!” Natasha all but shouts, startling them. When Clint looks back at her she’s red in the face. “You’re so fucking stupid, Clint.”

“Hey,” Sam admonishes, “This wasn’t their fault, red.”

It kind of was, actually. Now that it’s all coming back to him. They kissed in public, what did Clint think was going to happen? Everyone would throw a parade? But he doesn’t say that, because he doesn’t want Sam to yell at him too.

Natasha isn’t really mad at him, he can see it in her glassy eyes. She’s just scared. He reaches over and squeezes her hand. She squeezes back.

“Alright, why don’t you and I get some air? You’ve been here all evening, c’mon. Clint, man, don’t let Bucky fall asleep,” Sam gets up from the bed and beckons Natasha out the door. She follows reluctantly.

Alone again. Staring again.

“I’m so sorry,” Bucky rasps. His face is more bruised than not, and it hurts to look at. But he does anyway.

“Me too.”

Clint wishes he could kiss him.

There’s a knock, and when Clint finally tears his eyes away from Bucky, he sees a skinny blonde guy and a busty brunette lady standing in the doorway.  _ Steve and Peggy. _

“Oh, you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me,” Bucky groans, struggling to sit up without the use of his only arm. “The hell are you two doing here?”

Peggy hurries to the bed, her red polka dot dress bouncing around her. She kisses Bucky on his forehead and fusses with his hair. “Samuel called us,” she says, her accent as thick as Monty’s from the hotel last night.

“Of course he did.”

“We came as soon as we could. How are you feeling?”

He raises his eyebrows at her.

“Right. Well,” she waves behind her. “Get over here, Steve, stop brooding.”

Steve, arms crossed and looking like an angry kid, stomps over to the bed. “Look how the tables have turned,” he says in a voice that was way deeper than Clint was expecting. The whole exchange is amusing him, though seeing them is making something twist in his chest that isn’t his bruised ribs.

“Yeah, yeah, come here, you punk.”

Steve’s whole defensive demeanor seems to melt away, and he leans in for a hug. 

“Scared the shit outta us, Buck.”

“I don’t doubt it. Did I ruin your birthday?”

Steve huffs a laugh and pulls away. “I didn’t even remember it was my birthday until Pegs and Angie came over to make me cinnamon rolls for breakfast.”

“You better have saved me some.”

“We’ll make you more when you get home, darling.”

Clint’s jealous, that’s what it is. He’s jealous of Bucky’s friends, his family, his whole life.

“Oh, goodness!” Peggy exclaims when she finally notices the other bed in the room isn’t empty. “You must be Clint.”

“Yeah, Pegs, Steve, this is Clint,” Bucky introduces.

And then Peggy is kissing him on the forehead too. She’s got kind eyes and she smells like vanilla. “It’s good to meet you.”

Steve comes over and shakes his hand. “Sam told us who you were.”

There’s a twinkle in his eye, and Clint smiles. “Nice to meet you guys. Bucky told me about you too.”

No,  _ jealous  _ isn’t right. That sounds too harsh, too angry. The feeling in his chest is yearning, a longing to live the life Bucky has.

Sam and Natasha return them, and the reunion that ensues makes Clint think they’ve been apart for a year instead of a weekend. It’s nice to see.

When they get home, the only people who’ll be glad they’re back are Lucky and Liho.

Natasha uses some cheesy pickup line on Peggy that makes them all laugh, and she kisses Natasha on the hand before telling her she has a girl back home. When Clint mentions offhandedly that Natasha has a cat, Steve pulls his wallet from his pocket and shows them a polaroid of Bucky’s cat, a little white thing named Alpine, and Sam’s cat, a tuxedo named Figaro. Natasha laughs and tells him Lucky is outmatched. She seems to be feeling better.

And then a nurse comes in to check on them. They’re not gonna drop dead, so that’s good, but she said Clint is free to go home whenever he wants, which is...not so good.

“What about Bucky?” he asks her.

She takes out his IV and removes the cannula from his nose. “Mister Barnes will be staying overnight for observation.”

“I will too then,” he says, almost automatically.

“Clint, we’ve got work in the morning,” she reminds him gently.

“Tony’ll understand.”

“Clint,” Bucky says, “You should go, we won’t be far behind.”

The nurse smiles. “Your discharge papers will be waiting for you at the nurses station, Mister Barton,” and then she’s gone in a flash of her white uniform.

Everyone is looking at him.

“Let’s give the men some privacy, huh?” Sam says.

“Clint, there’s a change of clothes on the chair,” Natasha says.

The group shuffles out of the room and closes the door behind them.

Clint is off the bed in a second despite his aching ribs and spinning head, and he kisses Bucky on the mouth. It hurts like hell in the best way possible.

“I promise I’ll be right behind you,” he says again. “I’m not gonna disappear.”

“Me neither.” And it’s true. He’s gonna make this work. They’re going to make it work. “You’re pretty cool.”

Bucky laughs into his mouth. “So are you.”

Slowly, painstakingly, Clint strips off the papery hospital gown and pulls on the outfit Natasha grabbed from his suitcase for him. When he’s dressed and his bed is made (old habits; they’re just gonna strip the bed when he’s gone anyway), he shuffles back over to Bucky, who’s smiling despite his split lip.

“Well,” he says, a laugh starting to bubble up his sore chest. How could he have been so terrified to go home? Bucky’s contagious confidence finally creeps back in and tells him that everything’s going to be  _ fine _ . “It was nice meeting you.”

Bucky’s blue-gray eyes are sparkling under the harsh fluorescent lights. 

“Yeah. Congrats on winning the show, I hope you and Rose are very happy together.”

“It’s Daisy, actually.”

“Oh, right, sorry.”

And then they’re laughing, and groaning when it hurts a little too much. And they kiss again, and again, and again.

“Call when you’re back up North,” Clint tells him the number to the record shop. “Okay?”

“Sounds good.”

One more kiss.

“Thanks. For everything.”

“Right back atcha.”

And another.

And then Clint limps from the room.

*

**_MONDAY_ **

Clint is just flipping over  _ Strangers in the Night  _ to put on the title track again _ , _ which Tony dug up for him from the back, when the door smacks against the side of the counter, making him jump. He shuts his eyes. It’s lunchtime, which is when all the kids like to come in and give them a hard time, and he knows they’ll probably have a field day with the plethora of Band-Aids he’s got stuck on him.

“Hey, look who I found!” says a familiar voice.

Clint looks up from his spot behind the counter, and standing there is Natasha, Bucky at her side. His arm is still in a sling and his bruises are starting to yellow, but he’s real and whole and  _ here _ .

This weekend wasn’t a dream.

“Holy shit,” he says, getting up. “Holy shit, you didn’t call!”

Bucky tucks his face into his neck as a way of hugging him back and laughs. “I wanted to surprise you.”

“How did you—” he pulls away, his hand on Bucky’s side. Natasha is beaming at them. “How’d you find Nat?”

“There aren’t many  _ Chatterbox _ ’s in Pompton Lakes,” he says.

Clint shakes his head and bites back the urge to kiss him.

“Hey, the butcher Steve did his drawing for gave him some sirloin steak—wanna come over for lunch? Sam’s cooking.”

He looks towards the back room that Tony’s hiding in. He can just hear his rock music behind the door.

“Yeah, that sounds great. I’m starving.”

Tony’ll be fine if he’s a little late getting back.

**Author's Note:**

> how was it? goofy? sweat-inducing? all of the above? i’m always open to comments and criticism! and let me know if i need to add anymore tags/warnings :)
> 
> and follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/brookiyn1934/status/1274543808563249153?s=21) if you want! 
> 
> thanks for stopping by and see you next time ❤️


End file.
